In Hush and Tone

The coffee was bitter.
Outside, beneath an awning shadow,
She set the paperboard clutch down... another sip.
First found, the coffee bean was, perhaps in the mountains of Yemen,
     a small country nestled between the Red Sea, to the west,
      and the Gulf of Aden, south, immediately below what is known
      today as Saudi Arabia.

Coffea arabica, it is a beautiful plant,
      heavy with seeded coffee cherries,
            bowing around in the breeze... the sunlight
With its glimmering leisure in the leaves.
Harvested, processed, roasted,
      and ground down to a triturated
                        fragrant mound,
                  and its berries bathed.
Delicately steeped forever
                  in the waters of a boiling mist.

The barista slid a split wheat bagel, steaming, toasted brown
      on porcelain saucer,
      butter and knife in front her.

There is a softness
                  which we do not see...
      beneath the layers of a stranger,
      beneath the layers of a thief,
            or a friend...
A softness to silence
                  the most savage heart.

And though it seems to be found
      only in the surrender of death,
            and yet here it is
            in full display
For everything to see
For everyone to know.

So much an unmineable jewel,
      that most novel flower.