Ways To Take Your Coffee

With snow falling on blue spruce and a cardinal at the feeder and the fireplace’s crackly warmth easing into your bones and the final pages of a book about bears and the opening pages of a book about monks and no plans for the morning, the afternoon, the evening, tomorrow, next week, the rest of your life.

With ancient mountains all around and an ancient mountain beneath you and the climb still burning your legs and clouds building on the horizon, a storm coming for sure, but you’ve got time, you and your best friend, plenty of time to fire up the stove and brew a strong pot and trade sips back and forth while two golden eagles circle, circle, circle the summit, never once flapping their wings.

With a frisky dog straining against the leash and then released from the leash and then running frisky-wild, frisky-free, high on the caffeine that is canine living, that is a meadow of tall grass rich with smells and muck and perfect spots for rolling.

With the tray table lowered and the flight attendant offering refills and the plane oddly empty, nobody in your row, nobody between you and that thirty-thousand-foot view of twisty rivers, lumpy hills, entire watersheds, the earth just going and going and going, no end in sight.

With a wee splash of whiskey after an incredibly long weekend of whiskey and maybe some nature documentaries on the TV, maybe a greasy egg sandwich, certainly a headache, a rock-splitting headache, definitely the couch.

With bare feet in cool sand and the surf whispering along the beach and five gray whales spouting in the distance where many thousands of tiny silver fish turn as one, flash as one in the ocean that comes up around your ankles, your shins, your knees, then pulls back into the immensity of itself.

With tired, bearded men in a desert truck stop at midnight and then on out to your old trusty car and down the old lonely road, basins and ranges, ranges and basins, the radio off because it’s broken, the pedal pressed, the tires whumping, the sky without stars, a bottomless cup, so black, so black, no cream, no sugar.