Metaphysics over lunch

English professor and rebel: 
Off campus, our sentences race 
the tabletop, garbed in wit and color. 
By the time food comes, our ideas dance 
in lines, weaving outrageous figure, 
slapping hand on hand. Nothing can get you
if you don’t believe in it, you say 
from safety. And I believe you. 

Tribal leader and painter: 
An apple in the truck, and we stand 
at noon before your glassed-in relative, 
dead and reconstructed, her history 
on a card. Dug-up death pours off her 
and I move away; you stand and read. 
Filter, you tell me back in the truck; 
stare down what you see without eyes. 

Lawyer and fairytale expert: 
Now you, astride in your own light, 
enjoy lunching in the mountains 
where it all sings—snow, mist, or sun. 
Your talk treks the high trails; 
I inspect shadows where, you say, 
nothing we acknowledge can overtake us. 
Look out, I say as protection. 

Afterword 
Except when the tab is paid, we don’t 
consider your long legs bent under 
table or steering wheel. We never recall 
those priestly hands passing on powers 
you may ignore. Is it only my hidden stance
in Bible and constitution that senses 
all the hollows, where everything waits and yearns.