The kids are home, dinner’s on the table, the work day is done.

On the breezy side of the panes the winter night tightens its grip as a light rain falls.

Shortly before 7 p.m. at the Station Bistro near Auburn City Hall, where city leaders are about to meet, poets and lovers of poetry are tucking into dinner.

It’s loose, light and friendly at the Bistro, and the conversation flows like wine.

Over salads, burgers, sandwiches, soda and coffee, poets eyeball the scruff they’ve deposited in notebooks or scrawled over loose-leaf pages, making small adjustments here and there.

Like all poets, these seek inspiration, elusive as the lightning flash, but known from time to time to drop the precise word or phrase into creative heads, just like the ones that ride on their shoulders.

Eyes sparkle, pencils and pens wig wag back and forth.

At 7 p.m., emcee Emily Rommel Shimkus approaches the microphone. She introduces the evening’s featured poet, Michael Dylan Welch, internationally known, she says, for his Haiku and for his transliterations of Japanese poetry.

“Do the words capture the moment, or become the moment? … The aching swerve of rust on an old gate hinge ” Welch begins.

From that moment on and into the open mic period that follows, light syllables leap and dance, metaphor meets metaphor, simile curtsies to simile.

During the open mic time, courageous souls pick up their poems, the works of hearts and bones, walk to the microphone, and read. No easy thing for sensitive souls.

Or, if the readers choose, they may take advantage of the open mic to present the works of other poets.

“During the open mic people can read anything they want, as long as its audience appropriate,” said founding poet Brendan McBreen, a member for many years of Auburn’s Striped Water Poets.

“And any old schmo is welcome,” Rommel-Schimkus added.

McBreen said he launched these first Monday-of-the-month poetry readings in April of 2012 because he had grown weary of traipsing all over the region to hear poets he liked.

“So, I started inviting poets here,” McBreen said. “We’ve had a great response from the poets we know, and we’ve met a lot of new people and gotten regulars here that we had no idea would show up. We’ve had people from Green River Community College and Highline who show up regularly.”

One of those regulars is Cindy Hutchings, like most of the poets here, a member of Striped Water Poets. While she writes about a variety of themes she finds herself mainly drawn to nature.

Yes, Hutchings said, at first it’s hard to get up and read your stuff.

“It’s a little bit tough, but I’m getting more used to it,” Hutchings said. “This and our Tuesday night critique circle — it meets at 7 p.m. every Tuesday at City Hall — has helped a lot.”

The readings are sponsored by Northwest Renaissance, the City of Auburn’s Arts Commission and Station Bistro.