On Coffee

All across the city, everybody is making coffee.
In the shops, the bodegas, McDonald’s, diners,
apartment kitchens, depreciated condominiums:
Turning on kitchen lights with a clack or click
and reaching down the filters or French press,
then grinding the beans or uncapping canister,
slinging grounds, swishing sound, into the filter.

Then a scent which is like a presence or person
appears as everyone stands, sleeping, eyes shut
waiting for the coffee to perc. Going back into
half of a dream, dream epilogue, denouement,
the flutish sound of the Vltava River receding
in Smetana’s “Moldau,” night visions receding.
Wrapping things up and the day getting going.

So a person comes into the room, as in winter
when home for Christmas, coming downstairs,
the coffee’s already on and your house is full
and alive. Living alone, one can set the maker
the night before, but the effect is hollowed out.
Still it is some sort of sacrament, the moment
coffee is tasted: One rare undegraded example.