Is This Table Free?

  

“Is this seat free?”

“Szabad?”

“¿Está Libre?

“Is this table free?”

I ponder
the friendships;
marriages, affairs, businesses, partnerships;
transfers of tickets, newspapers, books, magazines
that begin with such question.
In my life?
Perhaps none, exactly, 
but, some important ones 
to be inexact. 

Is This Table Free?

Bob Komives

My path into marriage begins
where an angry girl says:
“I want you to get your drunken friend off my seat!” 
That was on one of the last 20th-Century-Limiteds 
racing west beneath Lake Erie. 


My discovery of relatives in Fertoszentmiklós
begins when I enter a 2-table coffee house
and say (unconsciously, but aloud):
  “Nincs szabad asztal.”
  “There is no free table.”


I begin a friendship 
when I find there to be no room (to stand nor sit)
to hear a panel discussion.
   “No room?”, ask I
from within a crowd of the disappointed.
And then, ask I:
   “Anyone want to watch basketball instead?”
from the depths of my ambivalence.

    “I do!”
responds fellow enthusiast, new friend,
from somewhere behind


I believe
(given a gift of perfect recall)
(in some room in my brain)
(across a broad tabletop) 
I could sort and recover other memories
of when something like 
  “Is-this-seat-free?” 
opens a chapter of my life.


Lacking such gift,
(synaptic tabletops otherwise occupied)

   “Nincs szabad asztal.”

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2015 :: Is This Table Free? :: 1505