This morning, fixing myself a cup of coffee,
nesting the filter in the cup, scooping
the coffee into the white cone, pouring boiling
water through; standing at the sink, watching
raindrops stream down the greenhouse window
(write “greenhouse” for accuracy, think “greenhouse
effect.” The mind links by just this one word
to “bleak” and “cosmic” and “extinct.” To “planet”
and “self-immolation.” To Timothy Brown,
the Vietnam vet who set himself on fire yesterday
to protest a Persian Gulf war. To “jungle,”
to Goodall’s chimps, who sometimes die of grief,
to the one named Passion, who murders and eats
her own kind—an aberration in the chimp
kingdom)—watching the visible world
melt into multiple image, re-form,
clarify,
melt again.
(Autumn, 1990)
Susan Kelly-DeWitt | Three Nights
Contents | Mudlark No. 46 (2012)