Eternal Cup of Coffee

author’s note:

"Good to the Last Drop"
          -- Maxwell House Coffee slogan


ETERNAL CUP OF COFFEE

On that evening
I sat at the table as usual
appreciating the comfort of habit

until my cup of black coffee
suddenly began to speak to me

saying silently:
this is almost a ritual
isn’t it?

“You mean because
  I always sit here at this hour
  and drink a cup of you?” I asked.

Well, yes, the coffee answered
but I suggest adding meaning
by expanding your perspective--
just think:

what’s done in this moment
will exist for eternity--
you’ll be sitting here
at this center of the Universe
forever.

I then suddenly experienced
what I usually so easily ignore:
I’m just a small dot on a bigger dot
that moves through a space so vast
I can not fathom its dimensions.

Nonetheless I again tried to fathom
and this time, when my mind went blank
all that I’d been
and all I hoped to become
collapsed
into the moment
and so that moment
became a moment of true peace

(----)

but in the next moment
I blinked
and again life was
as it usually is.

However
some sense of that forever moment returns
when I sit at this table in the evening
and meditate on that dot of coffee

until I can again feel the vast mystery
expanding out
from this miniscule center

then in a blink
the spell will break
as the coffee says:
time to drink me up.

And so
the habit has now become a ritual.

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© 2023, Michael R. Patton