Coffee, by Yaddyra Peralta

The coffee bush that sprouts from Honduran soil

thrives in the shade.

It is a heavy gift, life

of mornings accumulated, the smell of freshly tilled soil.

Her vagrant berries are picked by children and spilled

like marbles over the highlands

or else smuggled over the border

and sold to us as Guatemalan.

I once saw a river the color of coffee with cream.

Those waters daily carried the sediment of far-off soils through the shifting foreign tongues of the forest.

and from there: the moonscape of the ocean.

My kitchen is a moonscape and sometimes

the spaceship from my old home lands.

The things I smell and hear

are not memories but recognitions.

Some things are meant to travel far

from home and never return.