What Matters

    by Jodi L. Hottel

Although we are indoors

at a café, the wide brim

of a stylish straw hat

hides her face.

Her hands lie still

in her lap.

She sits across from a man –

her husband? her son?

He feeds her

a bite of bagel,

holds a cup to her lips

for a sip of coffee.

He leans

across the small table,

and looks under the brim

into her eyes,

with tenderness.

© 2011 Jodi L. Hottel

Jodi L. Hottel is a writer and retired English teacher, living in Santa Rosa, CA. Her work was published in Issue 4 of Touch: The Journal of Healing, as well as the English Journal, The Dickens, Frogpond and anthologies from the University of Iowa Press, Tebot Bach, and the Healdsburg Arts Council. She is currently working on her first chapbook, a gathering of poems about the Japanese American internment.