Excerpts From A Cup Of Coffee And Care
Excerpts From A Cup Of Coffee and Care
Looking Over The Rim Of Love
Coffee perched in cup holder, too hot, yet,
to put rim to lip and swallow some to
wind-down prenuptial time. Hands loose on wheel,
lights of city fading into little ground-down stars
of rancher’s pinpricks stating we have made our home here.
Houses nestled in little gullies with front lawns
stretching for sagebrush miles, there is an Aloneness,
almost a vulnerable settlement and stay
of panic-paced city you have just left behind.
I see you settle into the curled back
of vehicle, much like a cowboy’s back curls
to adjust to jar and spar of hooves
and seat of saddle that takes you home
after a quiet clip and clop out in far range,
but having had to go through town’s paved clank
of shoe and shy at such a foreign frenzied flutter
of too many, too close, and too much. An almost-feeling
of having stayed too long at some trotter’s oval
that burst its seams and the horses have left the gate.
You follow home-drifting stream and make poems
in your head of wind and ripples laughing
to see you follow maps of soul back to where light,
and love grasp like fingers on a favorite cup; reins
that show the grasp of years, guided like horse
that needs no halter and knows your knees so well
it finds its way to hearth by heart,
Going home, waiting to see that familiar fence;
loping land, and stacks of well-sawn wood
bracing best warm fire wishes for your return
of heart that holds a heart, well-worn, against this ‘stead
like leather, rubbed soft and chamois, finds its fit
like hand to glove again. Here, after love; a new love,
waiting to grow to each other, is what the fold and hold
of such “’til death” truly means: When light bursts,
like glad heart, to see a place, a face, come into full view
after a long, well-held, honey moon with many harvests.
A Sip Of Soul
She speaks in whirlwinds of fragile wings
to those of us who know
serenity in a flurry of feelings
that dart between the leafy shadows
to capture that central sip
of soul that would surrender soulfully
to her beauty and her grace
I am wont to enter greening glades
to press my intentions on forest’s felt
and in that gentle gathering
I am given webs to weave
on coffee’d rims of porch swing.
Feeding The Ancients Chocolate
This morning, my favorite color is brown,
brewing in the antique pot, waiting for cream,
so it can leave grounds in the bottom of the mug
and something to chew on.
I am a poet. I am. I have put on my Chocolate
River voice and spilled it across the table tops
in the Hopewell Café so others might lap
at my lines and leanings towards ordinary, brown.
Stains of light billow off the Bay, where tide comes in,
goes out rich as a melting poured straight from earth.
It is sweet and my tongue twists words round
before layering bright box faces with my rusty meanings.
My portfolio, padded with native skin sonnets,
bulges out with the nuts and cream of an almond life.
I am a brown poet, buying time with my best
brown words. The Hopewell Rocks are slathered
with Earth Mother’s sincerest breath.
I have offered up nuggets of necessary nuances,
dug into the mudflats and left sweet prizes there
for tourists to find and lick clean.
Over double-double coffee, I wonder at the words
I tucked into the Flower Pot hoodoos. Will they melt
or turn to stone? Should they slide into the tide,
will they be carried back to the earth from whence I came?
Were the faces there, so ancient they have no teeth,
grateful for the brown beans of belief, I breathed on them?
Will they remember me when I return to sit in the café
to slip secret sonnets to them again?
I shall never drink black coffee again, now
that I have offered cream to the mix. It must be stone
ground so we can swallow it smoothly.
Strategies Over Coffee
Coffee etches up crack
through minute spaces unseen
like water sinking into sand
or like fine spaces in filigree
it splays bony fingers
reaching morning lips perched
on mouth with purposeful tongue
ready to slip to dip tip
of words that could wage many little wars,
of big ones that we never planned,
but neither did we stop while stirring
with silver spoons or rubber-ended pencils.
There are headlines, stomping their feet
on gray snow of city’s celebration,
marching barefoot, dancing in a room
above me so that I hear shuffling
while I hone my teeth
on translucent static swarming
from a reticent radio trying to outdo
sweet cheek of bird filling with sunflower seeds
in swinging lardy drop-boxes
tied in midday sun which hovers
between short dawn and swift sunset
these days.
Grounds swirl at bottom
no matter how filtered it is
little Arabic words escaping heated brew
like children, orphaned but ecstatic
running through rain to keep
from being swallowed whole by every side there is
Exiles, scattered in garden to add meal for worms
fiber for new things to grow, perhaps even anger
that a world that picks and cooks coffee beans
for such sport as sun-up slurry and cravings
while little staccato voices hide themselves in cavities
waiting to cause much pain later.
Cream clots in clabbery clouds
to hide reflection of ne’er do wells
who linger long before shower and prayer
so they will be too rushed to notice
a golden dome turning gray with funerals
of nothing but remains of cities, communities,
square blocks of homes, caves of last thresholds
for hiding fire in so one can have a hot drink
to soothe night’s beast
that rises smokily from valleys
workers bent over, shell-shocked,
that café latte can be poured
while we plan new ways to take over the world,
over coffee in fine china that has split its seams
with weightiness of conversation.