In the Portage Bay Café

by Robert Nisbet

At breakfast time, the snow spins
its carousel through Seattle's winter streets.
Our meal out is an encampment
in America's gregarious heart, as waiters
teem, proffer their service's glad hand.
There are Rancher's Breakfasts, syrup,
pepper bacon, wafting coffee. In the midst,
in the steam of bonhomie, my grandson,
who is four months old, looks through
and at it all, the ketchup bottles
and the cream-topped rolls, with utter
wonderment. Behind him, down town,
sky-scraping blocks raise their challenge
to the ferries and the islands and the inlets
out in the sound. On again, and there are
mountains, out in the countryside's
long reach, their peaks capped
by the brilliance of snow.