Black coffee in a tin cup
on a board porch in the March woods
with crows announcing the end of winter,
I'm thinking heaven can exist on the earth
a few moments at a time, rocking
in my great grandmother's mission rocker
included free with a new cook stove
she bought for the family farm,
my great grandfather off in the oil fields
drilling another dry hole, dreaming of wealth,
not yet defeated, maybe still thinking,
as Thoreau wrote in his journal in 1842,
Heaven is to come, because this can't be it.
But it can, it can be, it can be black coffee
in a tin cup on a board porch
for a few minutes in March.
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No such luck. Tidioute, PA, c. 1860s (from a family album) |
