Drinking My Coffee in Winter
Black morning.
Winter lacing up its boots.
The moon fallen into empty trees.
No bees in the bushes -- soundless.
The heat of the coffee mug warming
both my cupped hands. Just that.
Bitter and hot as though it's
all that's awake, that's alive.
No sugar, no cream -- straight.
Filled with what has to be.
Winter tying its boots --
I feel the knots.
No sugar in the sky.
No cream lightening.
Coffee for a morning.
That light -- only that -- now, now.
I should be angry,
but the bitterness is good, the warmth.
Those, I can praise now, feel, want,
rediscover now, only now.
The dark of it, I can feel it as
I hold, as I drink the bitterness,
feel it for the cold circling,
for the silence of it.
But because of it, all this,
I can remember. I can be joyful
for the sugar of the sun,
when eventually it shakes down.
I can know it, feel it
for the bitterness of the coffee
and the warmth of its mug.
The laces go around the ankles tight
then back into a double bow.
Winter's ready. The house will shake.
Bitterness -- dark, longer for each day now.
Warmth, now a savor,
though I've finished the mug.
Erich von Hungen is a writer from San Francisco, California. He lives under a giant Norfolk pine in a century old house between Golden Gate Park and the Pacific Ocean. His writing has appeared in The Write Launch, Amethyst Review, Green Ink Press, The Hyacinth Review, IceFloe Press, Fahmidan Journal, Broken Spine Press and others. He is the author of four poetry books. The most recent is "Bleeding Through: 72 Poems of Man in Nature".
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