A coffee bar with orange paint --
Brown tables on a tiled, grey floor --
Soft light within blown glass above --
A neon sign hangs by the door.

I come here sometimes just to write.
A coffee bar with orange paint
To some would be apalling; but
I do not see it as a taint.

Tonight an artist's work is hung
Upon those walls in bold display;
A coffee bar with orange paint
Allows her dreams to have their say.

I like the color in these walls --
A brazen hue, not pale or quaint;
And in this place I weave my words --
A coffee bar with orange paint.

Hey, I even LIVE in Orange; the whole place is Orange, with an Orange tree planted right in the middle, in The Plaza (we are supposed to capitalize the "The" in "The Plaza," and we must NEVER call it "the Circle." Horror of horrors! Because, for one thing, those who do call it "the Circle," while speeding around it, very nearly run over us as we walk around slowly thinking up poems or listening to our music, or whatever. Chapman University, poetry, music, maybe some drugs... I'm just sayin'... the out-of-towners drive differently than we do; scarily so. One of them almost ran down my daughter Maria and me on our date Tuesday.

Anyway... yeah, I went to Diedrich's coffeehouse with Maria on Tuesday, and I think it's orange (small "o") too. With paintings! I've written lots of poems there. For some reason though all the University kids work over across The Plaza at Starbucks, in the cavernous old bank where my mother used to work, so I usually go there. Maria wanted a Mayan Mocha (it was yummy! I tried it!), so we had to go to the one with the orange paint, instead of that ubiquitous Starbucks green (as in money?).

Orange is a good color for poetry, and a good name for a town, especially if the town has an orange tree in the middle of it.

I love this poem, and you wrap it all up so perfectly in the last quatrain.

Thanks and love,

+Stevie