how to drink loss

Home is the place I can think from— carapace of dust
from milling crowd outside the window.

The street lights go off one after another, the ring of mist
diffuses like the dispersal of a cloud of bees.

I sit in this tight circle eying how far others throw their nets:
some come back to stuff dirt of the earth in their mouths,

most uprooted listen to the tree fall in the distant forest
in a soft thud of grief as they hold their warm mug of coffee

and look out at the snow-covered driveway. How do I hold
her in tenderness— one way of tending a life is to stand in a queue

at the shop as beans get roasted. It takes time to prepare
a tumbler of frothy coffee— a lifetime if it is the final gulp.

You in your chair overlooking the deck and I in my terrace where
the hibiscus shrub is eaten by mealybugs, hold the cup of absence.