Longhorn Diner

It is a long way from west Texas to New Haven, Connecticut. Not so much the miles, which are many, some 1900, nor the time to drive, some 28 hours, but for poet and professor Christian Wiman, the journey and time is altogether different! No matter the distance we might have travelled from our childhood home to our older adult life and the vastly different location and surroundings, there are always some precious memories of “home” no matter how inaccurate they might have become. A few years ago, I attended an event at Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut, where Christian Wiman, originally from west Texas, is professor. I found his poetry and personal story intriguing. I recommend his book My Bright Abyss : Meditation of a Modern Believer. Wiman writes “…life is incremental, and though a worthwhile life is a gathering together of all that one is, good and bad, successful or not, the paradox is that we can never really see this one thing that all of our increments (and decrements, I suppose) add up to.” In one of his poems Wiman captures a memory of a diner in west TX. Notice the details. You can almost smell the food and chat to others. Read it while you enjoy a morning coffee, read it slowly, and you will find yourself sitting there alone, having breakfast amongst regulars. Pause and ponder.

Sitting Down to Breakfast Alone
Brachest, she called it, gentling grease
over blanching yolks with an expertise
hone from three decades of dawns
at the Longhorn Diner in Loraine,
where even the oldest in the men’s booth
swore as if it were scripture truth
they’d never had a breakfast better,
rapping a glass sharply to get her
attention when it went sorrowing
so far into some simple thing–
the jangly door or a crusted pan,
the wall clock’s black, hitchy hands–
that she would startle, blink, then grin
as if discovering them all again.
Who remembers now when one died
the space that he had occupied
went unfilled for a day, then two, three,
until she unceremoniously
plunked plates down in the wrong places
and stared their wronged faces
back to banter she could hardly follow.
Unmarried, childless, homely, “slow,”
she knew coffee cut with chamomile
kept the grocer Paul’s ulcer cool,
yarrow in gravy eased the islands
of lesions in Larry Borwick’s hands,
and when some nightlong nameless urgency
sent him seeking human company
Brother Tom needed hash browns with cheese.
She knew to nod at the litany of cities
the big-rig long-haulers bragged her past,
to laugh when the hunters asked
if she’d pray for them or for the quail
they went laughing off to kill,
and then–envisioning one
rising so fast it seemed the sun
tugged at it–to do exactly that.
Who remembers where they all sat:
crook-backed builders, drought-faced framers,
VF’ers muttering through their wars,
night-shift roughnecks so caked in black
it seemed they made their way back
every morning from the dead.
Who remembers one word they said?
The Longhorn Diner’s long torn down,
the gin and feedlots gone, the town
itself now nothing but a name
at which some bored boy has taken aim,
every letter light-pierced and partial.
Sister, Aunt Sissy, Bera Thrailkill,
I picture you one dime-bright dawn
grown even brighter now for being gone
bustling amid the formica and chrome
of that small house we both called home
during the spring that was your last.
All stories stop: once more you’re lost
in something I can merely see:
stream spiriting out of black coffee,
the scorched pores of toast, a bowl
of apple butter like edible soil,
bald cloth, knifelight, the lip of a glass,
my plate’s gleaming, teeming emptiness.

Prayer:
Gentle God,
today I give thanks for
treasured memories.
For all that has shaped me into
who I am at present, knowing that
in your hands, O God, I, the clay, will
continue to be turned and shaped by
all that is around me and more preciously
all those who are around me.
In all my pausing and pondering
might I not neglect to enjoy the present
and live life to the full. In your grace
and love O Lord, I trust and depend. Amen.