Morning Coffee

Clear as water,

Dying, being born, always.

What was it you asked me this morning?

Coffee, toast, teetering on our knees.

Yellow headed blackbird singing

Somewhere in the marsh beyond the trees.

The nonhuman informs the human,

Replenishes.

Filled as we are with the reality of the other,

Why not rest an elbow on the moon,

Or bathe our many eyed bodies

In the wild yellow firepots of the sun?

What was it you asked me this morning?

Something about death,

Something about dried leaves?

Pale blue of the spring sky exquisite;

Slow unfurling of the new, green leaves.

Bright grass shooting up through dead yellow.

Run off water dank and fertile beneath the trees.

The reality of Death comes in its own time;

Its thought has no substance, no body.

Coffee, on the other hand, is delicious,

Filling the mouth with the taste of earth,

The taste of flowers.

And that wren singing in the poplars,

Tiny. Fierce. Wild.

Who knows what she’s up to?

Puffing herself up, throwing out trill notes,

As if she were the original, the primal being,

And you and I shadow figures

In the roaring of her throaty dream.