The Morning Coffee
The morning coffee.
I'm not sure why I drink
it. Maybe it's the ritual
of the cup, the spoon,
the hot water, the milk,
and the little heap of
brown grit, the way
they come together to
form a nail I can hang
the day on.
It's something to do
between being asleep
and being awake.
Surely there's
something better to do,
though, than to drink
a cup of
instant coffee. Such as
meditate? About what?
About having a cup of coffee.
A cup of coffee
whose first drink is too
hot and whose last
drink
is too cold, but whose
many in-between
drinks are, like Baby
Bear's porridge, just right.
Papa Bear looks disgruntled.
He removes his spectacles
and swivels his eyes
onto the cup that sits
before Baby Bear, and then,
after a discrete cough,
reaches over and picks
it up. Baby Bear doesn't
understand this
disruption of the
morning routine.
Papa Bear brings
the cup close to his face
and peers at it intently.
The cup shatters in his
paw, explodes actually,
sending fragments and
brown liquid all over the room.
In a way it's good
that Mama Bear isn't there.
Better that she rest
In her grave beyond the garden,
unaware of what has happened
to the world.
