Bunny's Hasty Tasty Pancake House, Dayton, OH

- for Lee Morgan

We don't like the pancakes we like the eggs over easy

we like the formica tables our names etched

in the deep old scratches we like the bottomless

coffee and the fine bottoms of waitresses

we like Elgar and Toscanini the way they

slide into the booth with us and get us all

to quietly hum along we like the view of the

parking lot and the passing traffic and

how there's nowhere else we need to be

we like Bunny and how he says he's

lefthanded in both hands we like

how he still likes Eisenhower and keeps

his photo up over the grill a shining

layer of bacon grease glossing the eyes

of the great general we like the shelters

Bunny built during the war for the orphans

and nuns out of big mahogany boxes

and how he dug the tunnels under the floors

to help warm their dirty bare feet

we like that we don't have to talk about the war very

much at all we like that we're here and not at Bill's Donuts

we don't like Bill and neither does Bunny.

-- Kris Collins