Somnus mihi

A ceramic mug sits lazy before me, doing little to heat the bean juice that lingers behind. A trail of coffee escapes down the side, down the side onto the wide oak table, that sea of wood, where it will only be a drop of coffee, in a sea of wood. A little farther away, floating, sitting, floating in the wooden ocean sit I, drowning in dull lamplight. Scenes, conversations, people, like surf flow up around me, and then pass, move on. Sometimes I try and hold on to it, grasp it, but it always falls away, or sinks into the sand. An old man in front of me, across the oak table in an old green chair, in front of me, fell asleep on his beard and belly, while his computer heated and his coffee cooled next to him. He left at noontime, but he will come back, like the tide, or the fat robins that migrate. A woman brought in another old man and sat opposite the first one, the sleepy one. This man, brought by the woman, seemed infirmed, helpless, like his mind had drifted back to infancy. But when the coffee touched his lips, and warmed his throat, discoloring his teeth on the way, his mouth opened and he talked and talked and spoke of days gone by which nobody remembers. Of Carrie and Ann playing on the red hill, playing without him, the baseball game he hitchhiked to, when who won? I can't remember who won. And the first old man sleeps on, not knowing who won, sleeping opposite him, himself opposite to the talking man, one's mouth opened by coffee, the other's eyes closed by it, asleep, asleep and oblivious, while I watch, and eavesdrop. I eavesdrop like the crumbly brick wall that surrounds us, and closes in on us, and listens. And I listen. I listen to the man behind the bar pouring out coffee--it is too early for beer. People want to stay awake, try to stay awake, unless, like the sleeping man, their coffee puts them to sleep, and they sit there, sleeping while somebody watches. Now my mug, my cold ceramic mug is empty, and I too fall asleep, nodding--like a ship on this wooden ocean. But there is always more work to do, always something to do, at least until nightfall, when I will fall, and stay fallen, asleep. Somebody watching, probably, there always is. So up and out I go, out of the creaky wooden door, into the cold colored Autumn afternoon, trying not to let the warmth, the coffee-scented warmth, escape with me from the people who need it, sleeping or watching, in the coffeehouse behind me.