16 - Setting

For today’s prompt, write a poem about (or at) a food establishment. You could pick on a chain like Taco Bell or McDonald’s, sure, but maybe there’s a local favorite–or some special dive. Heck, maybe that place where you took your first date or got your first job. Have fun with it, and if you need to do a little research, go out for something to eat.

Depuy Canal House

There were these places that we - all -
were happiest.

This old restaurant, old canal house,
in rural upstate new york where you could peer
down, good-looking, beautifully dressed, young and delighted - like one
of many levitating, framing angels in a rococco painting
upon the cooks
good-looking, busy with the pomegranates,
preparing wild mushroom soup, with pomegranates,
or stuffing the full bodies of radiant, glinting rainbow trout
with some unbelievable ingredients that grew
just out that sloped wooden door there

We were happiest there.
She was proposed to there -
a diamond in lieu of the mock turtle soup
the diamond that would be stolen off her limp hand
years hence

good years hence
some bad

but in any story the scene must be set
as a bookend for the return home

or

in contrast to the climax
light before darkness
the measure of things
the height of hope and bounty from which
the protagonist
falls.