Betty's Sunnyside Cafe

                                                               
There’s a place up Saratoga way
tucked just north of the grey & pink houses
where east facing windows
look bleakly to the lake,
the shoreline sprinkled with the skiffs of summertime.

Drive past once white, long haired cows,

now the color of old men’s teeth,
lying contentedly in lumpy mud
on straw laced fields,
bovine reminders of yesterday’s farms.

Stumble on in to Betty’s

…Sunnyside Café
Crack a Molson, and sit warmly,
rest your bottle on the red vinyl tablecloth,
gingerbread men prancing gaily across

You may feel unwelcome at first

for the farmers’ backs on red leather stools
are solid and unyielding
behind a blue curtain of smoke at the bar
a stranger with a notebook is a foreign sight

But soon you’ll feel warm and safe at Betty’s

a fat black stove rocks slightly,
stuffed with snapping logs
as Betty serves up brewskies
then kicks open the back door behind her
to shuffle in a sliver of hard March air.

The walls are knotty pine,
thickly coated with the stink of beers
from sixty years or more,
a crooked canvas to a neon group of clocks
Budweiser, Miller, Schlitz, Beck

But the water doesn’t stink at Betty’s

like the miraculous springs of sulfur past
and blue linen towels unwind continuously in the
bathroom dispenser
and the walls whisper of pool hall hustlers and
farmers with a week’s pay from their grain.

A tractor wide man with big black suspenders
parks his John Deere outside
and a young farmer with a wedding band
approaches your table to quote Shakespeare
a twinkle in his eye born of boredom
and farmer's daydreams.
Just stumble on in to Betty’s
…Sunnyside Cafe