Holes in the clouds by late morning. Field sparrows trill almost non-stop. My mother says she can smell my coffee way up in the woods.
coffee
6/9/2011
Sticky and warm. A clink of ice in my coffee startles up a deer, her tan coat passing in front of a cloud of blossoming mountain laurel.
6/7/2011
The dawn sky turns salmon. Down by the stream, the hollow cough of a deer. A swig of coffee and I’m off to count birds before the rain.
5/25/2011
Coffee in my left hand, I weed the herb bed with my right, muttering at the clover: out with you, foul sweetener! as my fingers turn black.
2/9/2011
Dawn: a thin band of vivid pink. I glance down at my coffee, and when I look back it’s gone, the sky’s gray. A titmouse’s monotonous song.
10/13/2010
I stroll down into the yard to examine grass blades outlined by the first, patchy frost, accompanied by my coffee’s pillar of steam.
6/14/2010
Coffee mug in one hand, I’m weeding stiltgrass from the herb bed. Such a delicate invader, so easy to kill! And yet so tough to eradicate.
2/9/2010
The soft trills of a screech owl an hour before dawn. I sip my coffee as quietly as I can.
1/15/2010
Out earlier than usual, it takes me much too long to understand why the cloudy sky is darker than the snow. Black coffee, enlighten me!
1/11/2010
Finishing my coffee, I walk to the edge of the porch and stop short: the western horizon is a dark battleship gray, an anti-sunrise.
11/7/2009
The latched door beneath the porch stands ajar. I step gingerly through the frost-edged blades of grass, carrying my coffee like a lamp.
7/25/2009
The misty sunrise puts me in a Hallmark mood: Roses are brown,/ violets, long dead./ This coffee is bitter/ and goes straight to my head.
10/22/2008
Quiet except for the wail of an eastbound freight: Grazierville. Tyrone. Plummer’s Hollow. Then wind and darkness, coffee bitter in my cup.
3/21/2008
The wind has smashed my chair, so I carry my coffee up behind the barn to watch the woodcock circling in the dawn sky. A satellite flares.