morning coffee

I missed you like summer
to a frostbitten
finger.

Yes,
I missed you like a limb
lost to the jaws
of an alarm clock.

I missed you like
the spoiled flesh of young love
aches
in the haze of separation,
and, though our divorce
was to be permanent,
your custody
of my consciousness
left me in a world of constant dark.

What good is a poet
without a cup of something?
Wine
in the evening,
or in the nearing dawn when creation stretches long,
but an early-hours citizen of a
Decaffei-Nation
I am not.

Returning to you,
carried like a queen
on the able-bodied shoulders
of your aroma,
you are again the warm sunlight
on my nearly withered leaves;
my steaming mug of photosynthesis
with a little
cream and sugar.


bryan borland (Little Rock, AR, 1979)