In February of 2024, we released our fifth Open Call: Using art, letters, stories, and poetry, tell us: how might we create healthy spaces and places for all? The following is a poetry submission we received from this open call.
“In Durham, NC, a city that has had its share of social struggles, there is a café that is a favorite of residents there. It is always crowded at lunchtime, and you will find there a clientele that is diverse in age, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, thanks to the open and welcoming nature of the café. Outside, there is a large sheltered patio with plenty of seating plenty of outdoor seating, but inside, there is only one table, an enormous slab extracted from the center of a tree trunk. If you sit there, you will inevitably be joined by any number of strangers, creating opportunities for novel conversation or simply communal silence. I would love to see more public spaces like this, where a space and its furnishings facilitate spontaneous, low-pressure community. And if a shared meal is involved, all the better.”
Morrow Dowdle
“Like Those That Divulge”
They ask us to slide over at the one communal table,
a tree split longways, slab sanded, polyurethane-glazed.
We move our seats, make way for their two wheelchairs.
They sidle up. Wheels touch, the table full at lunch rush.
We can’t help but overhear. They clicked online profiles,
now find themselves on this date at a Mediterranean café.
Niceties exchanged, they explain without hesitation—
one became paraplegic by a dive in shallow water.
The other while hiking, a fall down a mountain.
I wish you and I could start over in this way—unfold
so willing, gentle as napkins. Reveal without apology.
Less confession than a plea for tenderness.
The waiter brings falafel, pita, piles of hummus.
Plates graze the table, the tree, felled so that today
we can all sit together, the live edge rough
and unfinished. Knots epoxied, heartwood
exposed, grain with whorls like fingerprints,
lines like those that divulge love across a hand.
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