Old Smoke and Cold Coffee

By Doc Arnett on July 25, 2024

Lifting up a heavy mug of cold leftover coffee,
I draw in a slow, deep breath and catch the smell 
of dark grounds from the morning's brewing.

The taste is full and strong and I hold it on my tongue,
close my eyes and remember Pap Bazzell,
sitting in his chair smoking his pipe and drinking from a heavy mug.

He kept a tin of Prince Albert in the drawer 
of a dark mahogany tobacco stand
topped with a thick glass holder for his pipe,
molded slots around the edge to keep it in place.

Sometimes, he'd draw in a long pull,
tilt his head back and close his eyes,
exhale a long slow stream that curled up toward the low ceiling.

Somewhere near the end of his days,
feeling the fading and the keen aches,
he seemed to disappear in the haze that hung overhead,
swallowed up in memories from long years of life and labor.

In the lean years, he'd managed to fight off fear 
and feed his family from the garden and small crops
and an awful lot of long days of milling sorghum
and cooking down gallons of old time molasses.

He sold it by the jug and by the barrel,
bartered for pork or beef or whatever else
someone else held that could help them get by.

During the Depression and War Rationing,
folks around Coldwater used it for sugar,
though it had a mighty strong flavor.

Something like but much sweeter than the sharpness
of cold coffee and an old pipe clenched between worn teeth,
offering up its incense in a small white frame farmhouse
at the end of a long shaded driveway hidden by the woods.

There is much that is good that lives unseen by the world:
meanings and memories held in the hands and hearts
of those who've shown and taught kids and friends and neighbors

a love of labor and of doing what is right,
of holding to the Light through all darkness,
a yielding to and trusting the mystery of the Lord's own working
and a simple savoring of strong flavors in hours of fading light.


H. Arnett
7/25/24