Starbucks and Amanda Meeting

                                              AMANDA

         The new temple in this land is no longer a church, pub, or bar

         A place to shed anonymity as others speed by on streets in tinted windows cars

         The magnet for humans to dump shyness and strangers great

          Is the closest Starbucks to a lady pounding on a computer meet

          Conversations flow easily with the lights  not on low

          As opposed to  when the cocktails mask the pretenses trying to flow

          Today a young woman pounding on her computer keys back and forth to shake

To a poet observer confused that the artwork on the walls not moving in this phantom quake

Working on her homework sat Amanda for a college play

Coupled with a sense of dreams for a rewarding career to display

A sense of purpose to go on to teens in trouble and then advise

To somehow the path to their impending disasters revise

Any woman who is prepared to hours of apprentice servitude endure

Is a woman to whom all good things in this world should inure

          When this nation in its quest for Starbucks coffee decides

           To no longer get out of cars, to no longer go in and to remain enjoying inside

This nation will be in for the uncaring, invisible anonymity ride

With conversation and contact with strangers set aside

The walls of darkness outside the warmth of the human contact campfire

Will grow taller and thicker and will not soon expire

        © April 20, 2016, Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet

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