It wasn't what we were looking for
one preternatural summery day
in March, in the Davenport dust.
No app or website prepared us to find
such a vessel of hope near the levees
(they get as much use this year
as the bar at a teetotalers' convention):
Father, eleven year old son
and seven year old daughter staff
the tiny Vietnamese restaurant.
We're it, no other customers in the house,
we wait for our vegetarian soup
which the boy proudly delivers,
sister smiles behind.
On the wall, the smoke
of a false summer on the Mekong,
plum blossoms free
on placid current.
Jeff Bernstein's
A lifelong New Englander, Jeff Bernstein divides his time between Boston and Central Vermont. Poetry is his favorite and earliest art form (he can't draw a whit or hold a tune), Recent poems appear (or are forthcoming) in Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Birchsong – A Poetry Anthology (Blueline Press), Hobble Creek Review, Loch Raven Review, Main Street Rag and San Pedro River Review. His chapbook, "Interior Music" was published in 2010 by Foothills Publishing. Jeff's writer's blog is www.hurricanelodge.com.