Breakfast at the Planet Diner
Eliot Khalil Wilson

It’s not Tiffany’s
but here you can leave
the light gray rain of morning
and the sound of cars smoothing by
for breakfast noise,
the best of all human sounds.

A kind of chorus,
this angry grill,
the money clank of flatware
on a diamond green counter,
the clatter of sturdy cups and restaurant china,
hair-netted Betty talking filling coffee,
singing George, the Greek, turning eggs,
pressing out waffles.

Here is everything stainless,
on a day that might begin,
as spotless as the open face
of a cool spoon.

And it’s breakfast anytime,
so while Copernicus spins on his stool
before a carousel of syrup,
Oppenheimer stares down
at the warring atoms of his grits.

In our chrome and glass capsule,
we could have breakfast on the black ocean floor
or be quietly floating in space.

Amid the freemasonry of pancakes,
we are held in orbit below an over-easy sun,
the windows cloudy with human breath.