Poetry at the Post-Marfa: Coffee #2

[Over a cup of coffee]
BY STEPHEN DOBYNS

Over a cup of coffee or sitting on a park bench or
walking the dog, he would recall…

Monday morning I invited a friend for coffee at “Coffee + Toast+ Magic.”
The coffee I wanted. The magic I needed.

Marfa, Texas is a place that exists on its own time.
Like the Marfa Lights, sometimes things are there and sometimes they are not.
There was a handwritten note posted to the C+T+M’s metal door.
Be back on September 25th.

We headed to my friend’s casita instead. In a some ways, that was better.

In someone’s home, you can move around.
Coffee in the living area then at a table.
You can linger and allow the conversation to meander
to Taos and to Denver and across to Budapest and Berlin.

…how he had left long ago to try his luck in
Argentina or Australia.

You dawdle in the present,
imagine the future. You are not rushed.
The time over coffee becomes a journey…

And
although he had no sense of being on a journey,
such memories made him realize how far he had
traveled