Poem — Sept. 18 — “Coffee”

C.
C.
Sep 3, 2018 · 1 min read

Coffee diet

Stronger portion

(Rather than larger)

Clumped cardamom island

Rests atop blackened water

Cool, then burnt, then drinkably warm

***

A spoon against a cup’s edge

Like mother’s voice

Familiar enough to draw us up out of fugue

Into purposeful speech

(Rather than comfortable chatter)

Thin tipping tap and quiver

Metal to ceramic; ting tang kittle-clack

***

Poured out daily,

Your patient passages of hopeful verse

You give everything away

For fear of losing it

Or dying with full pockets

(Rather than being)

A man full of days

Old with doings

Graced with obligation after obligation

***

Semper Conatur

Sober as a tin of instant coffee

And privately soothing that which would

Keep you disloyal, rested, and full of

The spice of wild reason

Precious in the way that it sustains

A long lingering note

Through the coffee-ripe air

Through the rivulets of memory

That run your impoverished veins

You are wealthier than you have ever been

You meekly break your time of withholding

You bless the hands that provide

And you bless with the spilling of so many sacred words –

- the hands that deny

And in denying, bring you out of living death

From the smoking lakeland edge

Back to the fields for labour

And to a returning of real and valuable things