At McDonald’s
An attractive employee with mussed hair
pacing outside smoking a cigarette
two construction workers discussing
in simple Beckettesque lines the difficult
old lady impossible to please
with either woodworking or painting
the family pulling up with the camping trailer
ordering the biggest breakfasts they can get
the father with two identical copies of himself
all with crew cuts and turned up noses
trailing along behind
oh McDonald’s microcosm!
I look at my reflection in your window
wondering when it was
I got to be so old and stupid looking
Michael Estabrook is a recently retired baby boomer poet freed finally after working 40 years for “The Man” and sometimes “The Woman.” No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms. Now he’s able to devote serious time to making better poems when he’s not, of course, trying to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List.