The clock on the cafe wall stopped

the instant AJ relinquished her

last breath into a patient company

of air molecules crowding around

her hospice bed in the next town over,

having waited late into the night

for her final precious particles

to rise and mingle in their midst,

to join their invisible vigil through

which, later that morning,

shafts of sunlight fell like eschatology,

spotlighting flying flecks of dust

as the true rebels of the moment

and prophets of what one day must come.

How her soul must have leapt the chasm

of dead things and fled with a sparkle

into the paradise of life with the skip

of a school girl waving goodbye,

leaving behind sweet smiling eyes

that loved turning strangers to friends,

and hands that carried joy to tables,

feet that wore a faded path

all the way to the kitchen and back

as bare as pacing Secretariat’s

patch of earth down at Claiborne Farm,

each of them wearing a triple crown.

Wife, mother, entrepreneur,

who somehow turned the tallest

three story building in the world

into a warm concession of love.

Now in her memory Lee becomes

the memory maker for lovers

and travelers, for the aged

and sages finishing their races,

for steaming Pho worthy of Saigon,

all with transatlantic alchemy–

as if someone could miniaturize

the Eiffel Tower, as if a gathering place

could become sacred by layers

of breath exchanged and overlaid

(Cane Ridge without the pageantry),

life soaking the floorboards, coating the banisters,

so that when a virtuoso French tourist

showed up and brought the old piano to life,

dormant air from a thousand lungs began to burn,

awakened within the colorful walls

into a thunderous dancing line

like pounding thoroughbreds at the turn.

NOTES

Paradise Cafe on Main Street in Paris, Kentucky, serves oriental food, has overnight rooms, and is the tallest three story structure in the world according to Ripley’s Believe it Or Not.
Paradise Cafe is owned and run by Lee Nguyen. AJ; his beloved wife and restaurant partner, died on April 11, 2011 from cancer.
Famed racehorse Secretariat lived and trained at nearby Claiborne Farm.
There is in fact a 20-foot high miniature model of the Eiffel Tower in downtown Paris right across the street from Paradise Cafe.
The Cane Ridge Meeting House is a historic church building near Paris built in 1791 and was the site of a historic revival meetings in August of 1801, the most famous meetings of the Second Great Awakening.
The Paradise Cafe Facebook page has a video that captured a French tourist customer playing the restaurant piano with great verve and skill.
Bourbon County is one of the leading producers of thoroughbred horses in the world.