Friday, November 20, 2009

Behind the Coffeehouse Counter



You stop seeing people after a while,

and everyone becomes a fragment,

or an enlarged detail obscuring

everything else about them.

She likes her coffee sweet because

nothing about her last divorce was.

He loves mocha frappacinos

but pretends they are for his pregnant wife.

She is a groggy shot in the dark every morning,

but blossoms into a latte with a milky flower for the afternoon.

He is a foaming pint of Guinness,

who tells me he would taste better in Ireland.

In the evening the pipe comes in with his books,

hoping to puff his way from freshman to Inkling.

He is the silhouette in the clouds of Black Cavendish,

studying only his books, and not the women.

My leggy, blue-eyed Americano sits at her table,

and I forget about pubs and coffeehouses.

She sips from her small paper cup as she turns the pages

of books about beakers and Bunsen burners.

These walls are home to a brewery of happiness.

It is a place where man does not live by bread alone,

But by every granule of every bean

Roasted for his happiness.

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