Sunset Longing

a martini glass sits empty
on a coffee table in Cape Cod
even the olive has been eaten
though he never cared much for olives
he usually garnished his life with useless glam
disguised as rustic beauty, a fully furnished bar
for no one, a coffee table straight out of a Hemmingway novel
that he never will read but nonetheless collects dust
in his library that doubles as the smoking room;
he hates smoke but chews cigars, twirls martini glasses
in the awkward silence of a desperate woman as she
crosses and uncrosses her legs, and this one is a brunette
and this one will be special, and this one stares blankly
out into his country promenade but will never stroll there
and her cosmopolitan is sipped for sipping sake but not drank,
he notices nothing and stares past her breasts, lost in loneliness
and liquor from his third martini of the night and man how he once
could drink a man under the table, but time has left him with nothing
more than a coffee table and an empty martini glass and a woman’s indentation on the couch.

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That was a random poem I wrote based on that photo years ago that I just stumbled upon. To the photographer whose website I yanked the amazing photo from to fuel my creativity one night, I apologize for not asking your permission or giving you proper credit by name. If I remembered where the hell I got it from, I would have pursued the proper channels. Not that you will ever probably read this. I'm fully aware that this is blog number 1,562,987.