Morning

(This is National Poetry Writing Month, Day 18, take two. All month, I have felt my poems to be ostentatious and dull and have wondered how to break the mold. Epiphany at 11 p.m. helped me realize that I was writing without listening to my own voice. Hopefully, now, things will get better -- or at least funnier.)



Alarm rings at 5:45 a.m.
The cue for B-Girl, who's been sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at my slumbering body, to start pawing me awake.
The sky is light enough for the roosters to crow.
I rise, reluctantly, from the overnight warmth of blankets and body heat
and try to recapture the feeling in jeans.
Outdoors, a light dew decorates the slowly greening grass.
In the coop, the chickens have knocked over the feed trough again.
Only, I learn later, it is not the chickens who are to blame,
but rather the goats,
who, like wild puppies or the proverbial bulls in the china shop,
romp joyfully,
paying no heed to the damage they wreak.
In the kitchen, the coffee maker that withstood three major moves and ten years of marriage gives up the ghost,
prompting a panicked search for the campfire percolator,
last used in 2009 over an open fire in the Columbia Gorge,
where a man without a home traded armloads of brush to get a fire started for a handful of beans.
Coffee beans.
Caffeine is an equalizer across classes and other demographics.
We all need our morning coffee.