BABG
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.