Kelly Jo Garner

Coffee

I am not the birth of Venus
in the morning, staggering off to reach
for the first cup of hot, brown liquid
cupping in my hands the essence of life itself,
or at least the essence of the first of the morning.
Did Eve feel like this when she tasted the
succulent sweetness of the apple, when she
licked the shiny red brightness and realized then
what the meaning of depth and light was?

2.

When I arise from my bed,
stepping lightly over whoever may have landed there from the night before,
I glide towards the
kitchen, imagining or remembering
what happened prior to my awakening,
and smell the sweet smell of coarse, hard,
oily beans. These beans
which yield the stimulation I needed
and have suffered for
merely three hours before.

3.

If I were to try and describe the sensation
of warm fluid coursing down my throat,
opening wider the chasm of delight within me,
you could not comprehend the pure pleasure I feel
upon accepting this gift from the gods.