Café Rendezvous: And Other Muses

By Gerry Fraser Bryant

Café Rendezvous is a mixture of romance and literary poetry and prose. From heart pounding encounters to reflections on things past, the words of author Gerry Fraser Bryant are mesmorizingly splendid.

He wrote “Ode to Americans” in the days immediately following 9/11. A couple years later, he wrote “The Last Day” in remembrance of soldiers killed by roadside bombs. He wrote “The Sweet Music of Yesteryear” after attending his high school reunion in Visalia, California. Three imaginary letters are penned from Kitty to Anne Frank, and “The Best Feeling Is Before” pays homage to William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 129.”

For this literary collection by Bryant and other writers, settle in
for a reading experience filled with emotion that brings both
romantic rendezvous and current events into the realm of art
never to be forgotten.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663231079

Gerry Fraser Bryant

Gerry Fraser Bryant lives in the San Francisco East Bay Area and is currently working on his next book. He grew up in the San Joaquin Valley town of Visalia, California. Writing, poetry, and tennis are his passions. Café Rendezvous is the third book of his continuing Fraser Series.

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Copyright © 2022 Gerry Fraser Bryant.

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue

in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3108-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3109-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3107-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022901505

iUniverse rev. date: 05/20/2022

Dedicated To

Faye Hsiu-Hui Kuo

&

Yi-Ling Kuo

&

Michelle Kuo

Posthumous Remembrance

A loving dedication and remembrance … My former wife,

and dearest friend … Yongcha Bryant, 04-22-18.

The bravest person

I have ever known!

NO TIME TO SAY GOODBYE

’Twas us passing by the other day

As time rolled slowly by day by day

Thoughts of green pastures flowing yonder

Flowing greener kinder fonder

Youthful time came with rolling wonder

Pleasures were so easily taken

Pleasant times so plentifully making

Happy then before awakening

But somber times lay awaiting

As thunder in a storm in making

Hurried time of searching soundings

Seamless swirling symbols sounding

Happy times past now lost …

No time to say goodbye

Author’s Note: I encourage donations to the "Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research." Some future day all disease will be eradicated from the face of the Earth. But, until that day has come, medical research needs our help in every way possible to accomplish that goal! I want to personally thank you all.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This, The Fraser Series, is especially for you dear students (and all other readers!). As you enter the world of learning, knowledge, literature, and the use of your wonderful imagination. By students I mean young readers mainly High School and College. But I am writing for adults too. It is a double-edged sword, a balancing act. I am writing for both audiences, but mainly for you dear Students! I have two quotes for you. Both dear to my heart:

Regarding leaning (a lifetime enterprise) and education, I have always remembered a speech I heard once when I was about your school age. Robert F. Kennedy’s¹ words are now remembered worldwide. His words are so inspiring! I have always remembered his kindness and strong encouragement to the youth of our country. These words spoken by Robert F. Kennedy, in his beautiful Bostonian/Massachusetts accent, on college campuses, during many occasions in the 1960s, inspired the youth of the time, during those difficult times, as I hope hearing/reading them here are an inspiration to you! His words speak to us today as profoundly as they did those many years ago. Robert Kennedy prefaced his words as quoting George Bernard Shaw. These words were likewise quoted by Robert’s famous brother President John F. Kennedy.² The power of these few words is immense. The power to realize every individual’s potential. To imagine dreams that can be fulfilled; men of course, translates to men/women:

‘Some men see things that are and ask, Why?

I dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?’

Another quote, another inspiration! This was written by a young man, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). And the imagery of ‘boyhood’ surely does translate in meaning to ‘boy/girl.’ I have always remembered these words, remembering those wonderful days of our youth, awakening to the excitement of reading and of English Literature. This was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1836, during the time when he was editor of The Southern Literary Messenger.³

How do we recur, in memory, to those enchanted days of our boyhood where we first learned to grow serious over Robinson Crusoe!—when we first found the spirit of wild adventure enkindling within us, as, by the dim firelight, we labored out, line by line, the marvelous import of those pages, and hung breathless and trembling with eagerness over their absorbing—over their enchaining interest! Alas! the days of desolate islands are no more!

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Prologue

Café Rendezvous

1.   A First Meeting

2.   Coffee

3.   Expectation’s Delight

4.   Friendship At Hand

5.   Meeting At The Cafe

6.   A Stranger In The Light

7.   The Night Club

8.   Midnight Rendezvous

Sweeter Sweet Music

John And Johnny

Ode To Americans And The Last Day

Secrets

The Lost File

Long Time Ago

Writer’s Plight

Cold Cold Heart

To … (Remembered)

Sweet Surrender In The Night

Sunny Days And Figgy Foggy Nights

My Silly Girl

Broken Heart

Do You Know?

I Do Not Love You

Why?

Downtown

All Your Lovin’

Sweet Dreams

Paper People

She

It Takes Only One

One Last Dance

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Grains Of Sand

The Best Feeling Is Before

Blackbird

Grandma

Tree

The Valley Of Shadows

Sweet Music

What’s Coming Out?

Dream Lover

Eight Little Letters

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The Sweet Music Of Yesteryear

The Lucky One

Talent

Kim … Eulogy – A Loving Remembrance

References

If Not Here Then Where?

Trilogy:

As You Like It (Jaques’s Speech) – By William Shakespeare

Another Time – By Lynn Linton (adapted)

The Light Of Other Days – By Thomas Moore (Ref. Vincent van Gogh)

Eternity – By Emily Dickinson

Anne Frank’s Best Friend

Three Letters From Kitty To Anne Frank

Edgar Allan Poe – Prelude to a future Biography

A Word About Words & People & Places

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to express thanks to many dear friends, including those who I have met recently at Café-houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. You were my inspiration for writing Café Rendezvous! The poetry of Sweeter Sweet Music is a small number of poems I’ve written since my first book of poetry Sweet Music (reference to James Joyce’s first book of poetry, Chamber Music)⁴ was published in 2000. Also, a few poems restated here with some slight revisions, starting with Grains of Sand, and concluding with Eight Little Letters, written in the 1990s, first published in 2000.

With reverent fond remembrance, a posthumous thanks to my mother Gladys Fraser Bryant for her love and for her many loving poetic expressions that filled the time of my youth with such joy! From the vacation shores of Bass Lake, to the solid ground of adulthood, mom is endearingly the continuing inspiration for The Fraser Series.

A special thanks to my dear friend, Faye Hsiu-Hui Kuo, whose inspiration is never ending. Faye is appreciated beyond any measure of thankfulness I can adequately express. Also, with boundless appreciation, fondness, and love for a lady I met a few years ago, from the shores of Thailand, my wife Amie Ratana Chantrawongsakorn.

GFB

December 2021

PREFACE

Although poems and writings are ideally left to individual understanding and unique interpretations, I want to give you some small background for a few of my writings found herein.

I wrote Ode to Americans in the days immediately following 911 (Sept. 11, 2001). Then, a couple of years later, I wrote The Last Day, when it seemed that every day soldiers were being killed by roadside bombs. I wrote neither of these two poems to be either for or against war, rather an expression of sorrow that such things as wars exist at all.

I wrote The Sweet Music of Yesteryear some years ago, after attending my high school