What I'd really like in my old age
is an all-night diner across the street,
breakfast twenty-four hours, good coffee,
smoking in the back. I don't sleep long
most nights. Years ago, when I knew Keith
the baker across the way, I'd wake and
walk over to the bakery and visit with
him in the wee, small hours, maybe have
a toke or two, listen to some weird
flying saucer, interplanetary, aliens-
among-us show on the radio and then
say my good night or morning and wander
back to my place and back to sleep.
It was good. But what I'd really like
now is an all-night diner. I could
climb out of bed at two in the morning,
cross the street and into the light and
smells of early morning, truck drivers,
newspaper workers, cab drivers, (I
worked in a place like this once) and
find my booth in back and sit watching
and maybe writing while I drank my
coffee and smoked, feeling the night
outside, not a harsh night, a benevolent
night, guarded by the city cops at the

counter, a sheriff's deputy or two,
everyone caught somewhere between
sleeping and waking, a good place to
be. We need these places and they're
fading fast, eaten up by the chains,
the mass-producers. They're getting
harder and harder to find and I very
seriously doubt that I will find one
across the street from my apartment
before I die. But it's a nice dream.
Sometimes I wake in the night and
stumble to my bedroom chair and my
last night's cold cup of coffee, light
a cigarette and sit there half-asleep
dreaming of just such a place. And
the dream takes on cosmic proportions
and I find myself floating upward
through the ceiling out into the
star-cluttered night and I'm walking
along a road that rises up into the
sky and far ahead, its lights out-
shining the stars, is my diner, my
cosmic diner, arms outstretched,
just waiting for me.