The First Coffee
Poetry
The coffee is
real and proud.
Roasted on site.
The first one
confusing in
the place we
called the cradle.
Ritual of high altitude
caffeine carries
slight nausea
for me, uninitiated to
a tangle of alphabets.
The words hard
to differentiate.
The taste, mostly familiar.
I’ve made a mess with
tables and spills.
Long skirt and Adidas,
a new uniform.
I don’t know my order
or place. A kind of
clumsy stupor.
This, I do know:
Breathing up here
requires lung work.
I am aware of
the city’s soul.
This urban church
of unlaced shoes
polished by arthritic hands.
Witness to a
thousand garden
years of mud and stone.
There are fancy
hotels that require
you to go through
polite security,
scan your purse and self,
a new oxymoron.
Will see how the
butter of geography
works its wily magic.
Universe says ok.
