How Coffee Found Me
By David P. Miller
I don’t know how it is in Boise now.
But then, the summer that sealed the end
of my first wedlock, hot tea to go
flummoxed the Red Robin counter staff
my first night after a three-day,
ninety-nine-dollars-anywhere
Trailways odyssey. Out of the kitchen
something-or-other came my way
in takeout styro soup cup, hot with lid.
Two blocks to my digs, a slightly furnished room
fit up by the Idaho Shakespeare Festival,
my first, next-to-last professional theater summer.
Two blocks, pried the lid, uncovered
iced tea mix in hot water. Lemon flavored.
I became a coffee drinker in that irrigated
desert city. The bitterness had baffled
my tongue, annoyed my palate.
But although nobody seemed to claim
tea-powder soup the local delicacy,
such was the mess thrust in my direction.
On caffeine’s other hand, there were urns.
Cylinders of coffee slow-simmered,
evaporated by the hour to a state
two evolutionary steps removed from ooze
primordial. Nectar rancid enough to put hair
on a man’s teeth. That summer
of divorce papers served cross-country,
I put the molded foam cup to my lips,
drank the stuff in bites, refused
the reputed creamer dust, restarted
my confused, jittery life.
Copyright © 2020 by David P. Miller.