OR ME

Summers my mother drank iced coffee

which seemed so strange, as on those same mornings

she sipped it hot – worshipfully, like some sacrament.

Summer days she gulped it voraciously, to quench

the murderous thirst of a Georgia afternoon.

Long before I became acquainted with the notion

of comfort food or drink, there seemed to be

some essential confusion over coffee (she never

drank tea).  But that was not as confounding

as countless other things, such as my missing the bus

once or twice a year, her becoming so enraged,

so withdrawn, that by day's end she still did

not speak.  Passing from class to class down

dreary corridors I would plot how to

break the silence, how to make it up to her,

never considering that perhaps it was the

disrupted communion with a steaming cup

that was the great sin.

If only I could miraculously engage her in some

totally neutral topic just to hear her voice again,

and know that I was still in orbit with her,

my sun.

Even now, she runs hot and cold, one minute

genuine and sweet, the next, prattling endless

mantras like “you made your bed, now lie in it” --

but there are just so many beds!

Could things be different with mothers

who take coffee in only one way?

I can still see the hot black brew,

the pucker of anxious lips over the gilded rim,

feel the muggy day latch upon us

like a sudden overgrowth of epidermis

and hear the tinkling of ice cubes,

which always seemed the happier of two coffees,

their sound a heavenly, consoling kind of music

      to the ears of a child

           so often thirsting after salvation.

C Julianza Shavin 2 27 08