Throw away all scales
calibrated within an obsessor’s
tenth of a gram
along with today’s finest
contraptions of brew gurus and roast
masters – even sharp sense
can not preserve every secret.
A young man’s realization:
All we can do is take away.
Bound in the innocence of
so many gray-green potentials –
could-be cups packaged in
multitudes – all futures
stored away, yet
only one can be realized.
So all we can do is
take away:
burn the present,
watching and listening
and feeling for the
golden moment
– not the perfect moment
(one that tells every story)
that does not exist –
but rather, after density of youth, a
moment of burning brilliance
before brittle bitterness and cracked lips
forget how sweet it once was.
A shame, perhaps, to choose
just one, but a lesson to take away:
The magnificence of a cup of coffee
and an adulthood realized
in true form
has never come without the
expense of youthfulness spent
in heat and time and patience.
