The Boy With the Poppyseed Buns

The single driving force behind these blogs is the fact that, having lived every moment of my life within the container of my body, I still do not have any idea of how my mind works, and why it works the way it does.

Last night for absolutely no reason "The Boy With the Poppyseed Buns," a poem I wrote several years ago, inexplicably came into my head. I hadn't been thinking about poetry, and can't remember the last time I wrote a poem. But for some unknown reason, this particular poem, deliberately written with Rudyard Kipling macho bravado overlaying a sense of deep loss, has some strange, special significance for me. Exactly what that significance is, I cannot say.

I may actually have done a blog on it at some time in the three years I have been writing blogs, and if you've been with me long enough you may remember it. But I feel oddly compelled to put it up again as yet another exhibit in the anatomy class of my soul.

The Boy With the Poppyseed Buns

It was just break of day in the Spanish café,
the time when the first church bell tolls.
My tongue painted brown from a night on the town,
I’d stopped in for some coffee and rolls.

The place was renowned for the best food in town,
it’s pastries were lighter than air.
I’d arrived just last night on the Calcutta flight,
and was hungry for non-curried fare.

As the blaze of the day spread throughout the café
with the stealth of the incoming tide,
a form appeared in the doorway
not even the sunlight could hide.

His silhouette carved out of broad sunbeams
cast a cool shadow ‘cross the rough floor.
I fought the sun’s glare as I squinted to stare,
knowing somehow I had to see more.

I made out a young man about twenty,
with a face like an archangel’s song.
A youth of such exquisite beauty,
it sounded my heart like a gong.

Short hair black as night framed a skin smooth and light,
and eyes deeper blue than the sky.
Beautiful men? Seen again and again,
but none who so made my heart sigh.

He stepped to the bakery counter;
in a voice that could warm up dead suns
he asked the flour-flecked baker
for an order of poppyseed buns.

His eyes swept the room’s few, blank faces
and settled, at last, on my own.
His mouth curved into a slight smile
that few mortal men can have known.

I sat there as if struck by lightning,
his beauty had riveted me so.
Before I could regain my senses,
he picked up his package to go.

I wanted to get up to follow;
to not let him out of the door.
I wanted to say: “Won’t you sit? Won’t you stay?”
But my feet were as nailed to the floor.

He paused briefly, there in the doorway,
and turned to me with a slight nod
And then he was gone and I sat in the dawn
and cursed an insensitive God.

I rose to my feet and rushed into the street,
but the young man was nowhere in sight.
It was if he had gone with the just-vanished dawn,
leaving me in perpetual night.

His smile still casts beams that light up my dreams;
his eyes I can never forget.
Of all men I’ve had, many good, many bad,
it’s his face that stays with me yet.

I’ve run with the bulls in Pamplona,
I’ve scaled mountains in far-off Nepal;
I’ve found buried treasure worth wealth beyond measure,
but I lost the best treasure of all.

I’ve seen tigers at play down in old Mandalay,
fought duels with sabers and guns...
But I’d trade it away for just one quiet day
with the boy with the poppyseed buns.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.