Frank Rossini

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