The Nokomis Beach Coffee Café

We live in two neighborhoods.
When first we moved to the Twin Cities,
to South Minneapolis, which if it were not
for the tangled designations the Mississippi River
causes for us, would be Southeast Minneapolis.

We found the Coffee Shop

and stayed there.

We made friends there.

Dennis said our names

louder even than

the espresso machine,

so people had to learn them.

This morning Mari corrupted an article from the newspaper

by putting Dennis onto a perfectly appropriate title: he just

celebrated his fortieth, and he is our community organizer.

Three years ago we moved across the Minnesota River,

mostly because we wanted to live under an airport flight path,

but we never left the Coffee Shop. Saturdays, especially,

the friends we made meet there, and tell lies about things

we have done and said. It is community. Our community.

Our work there is unfinished.

We have to convince Mark that he does not need a motorcycle.

Sloan is not yet a year old, and we have to choose

a college for her. Someday Joel will take off his cap,

and all of us want to see what he looks like without a bill.

When she is ready, Nancy is going to explain

how pasting 325 tabs in a book makes it easy

to find things. One could shred cheese with the edges

of her books. Patti is going to teach Dale how to dance.

It seems like a waste, but it is her time.

And Dennis is getting older; still good, but noticably older.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog