WHAT YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER by Stan Sanvel Rubin

Death seems less likely in the morning

when you wake, if that’s what we do,

in a new day, if that’s what it is,

 

but all this hinges on Time, doesn’t it?

And not even physicists or philosophers

agree on what Time is and if it’s really

 

necessary to anything except Death

which is the limit everything flows to

yet nobody understands.

 

If I remembered to set the timer

on the coffee pot last night, and remembered

to replace the paper filter

 

and fill it with fresh ground coffee,

those fine dark brown grains of sand,

I’ll wake looking forward to what I smell

 

rather than regretting again

how I failed and what I lost.

Everything depends on whether I made coffee.