These Are The Good Old Days

Bright yellow sunflowers are for sale in the grocery store.

A tiny woman bent over her cart can’t reach the cheese she wants on a shelf above her head. A middle-aged man in shorts and a tank top holding a loaf of bread veers off his course, easily reaches to get it, drops it in her cart, they smile and he continues on.

The clerk and her customer are trying out each others’ native languages mixed with their own and giggling at the outcome.

A very pregnant woman in a sari tries to lean over her cart to organize her groceries, her thick dark braid bound around with glittering gems; her daughter clutches the wire edge and her liquid brown eyes look up to search her mother’s face.

A young man tells the person behind him in line he’s happy with the toaster, he can afford it and carry it home to his new apartment on his bike.

An older man in shorts and a plaid shirt is assuring another man similarly dressed that if his wife sent him for naan, this was the stuff.

Everyone is smiling.

poem copyright 2017 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

One late summer morning in the grocery store I was surrounded by peace and love, nothing historic, just the everyday interactions among strangers that are so beautiful. The photo of the sunflowers is the very one that I took that morning while standing in line, which inspired me to record it all and write a poem.

I read this at my poetry reading, “Walking Around”, last November. I just realized I never shared the entire reading anywhere, so I’ll hope to do that for the anniversary this year.


Read more:   Essays   ♦  Short Stories  ♦  Poetry

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