coffee
grade school mornings I woke
to my mother downstairs
at the mottled gray kitchen table alone
with her coffee waiting
for my sisters & me to come down
pour our cereal into plastic
bowls drown it
with milk & sugar our father
asleep until we left
I don’t know if my mother drank
another cup before he came down
or maybe a third with him
I loved its aroma but not
its taste
the last time I sat alone
with my mother she was drinking a cup
in the kitchen of the apartment
my parents moved to the summer I left
& they sold the house
& gave away my childhood
trains comics & shoeboxes
of baseball cards
she had talked to the young parish priest
he assured her I would come back
to the Holy Mother the Church I was silent
waiting for her to change
the subject tell me
who died who had married
how she & my father were moving to Florida
when my youngest sister left
for college
I didn’t visit often
avoiding arguments with my father
about religion Vietnam Civil Rights
my father a self-made lawyer built his case
with classic logic I countered with stories
songs & poems the volume rising
till silenced by our angry shouts
my mother coming to me after whispering
your father loves you
I never went back to that mother the Church
I moved & found faith in a small piece of land
the songlines of its trees
stones plants soil its birds fluttering
back & forth between tangles of rosemary
& hanging seed feeders the deer grazing
on fallen crab apples
the squirrels burying acorns
in winter’s tired gardens
now in my 70’s I take a pen a notebook & drive
to a downtown bakery a few times
a week order a pastry
something savory sometimes sweet
& a cup of coffee brewed fresh splashed
with cream to ease my tongue give me time
to unknot the bitterness understand the lonesome
quietude of its taste
