The couple at the table beside us
are, no doubt, on a first date.
He’s talking about travel plans – a beach –
she’s quite casually looking at her watch.
More coffee? No, thank you. I’m good.
Tag coffee
You Come Too
I went out to feel the equinox.
I raked leaves away from young shoots,
and connected the hose, washed away mud
until the walkway was clear. I wasn’t
gone long, but my coffee was cold.
The Angel Orders a Double Espresso
because it had been a rough night.
Her eyes are blue as heaven’s dome,
staring past me, so I turn around
following her gaze – a child drawing stars –
turn back, and she has miraculously flown.
Conversation With An Angel
who wasn’t interested in life and death
talk over our coffee. “Beauty’s the start of terror,”
he said. “that we can hardly bear.”
“One of your poets actually said that.
You adore serene scorn. Every angel’s terrifying.”
The conversation is, in part, from Rilke’s cycle of poems that he called Duino Elegies
Café au lait
She stirs her coffee like her emotions,
adding sweeteners, sometimes artificial, sometimes quite real.
Cream to soften the bitterness, the bite,
which is what attracted and repelled me.
That burning tongue taste you must have.
Night Cafe
Not late, but late enough for sleep.
People still drinking their coffee and tea,
ending their day or starting their night.
The child speaking French to her father
said Goodnight to only me. Only me.
The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night
by Vincent van Gogh.
Writing the Day 