Next Installment in the Continuing Poem Series About the Fall of 2055

November 10, 2005
Once a month I buy a pound of coffee ground for a cone filter machine

I take it home
and pour it into the pink and white tin where it lives in the freezer
except it doesn’t all quite fit
so for a few days there is also the leftovers
in their small rolled up brown paper bag in there too
Bill brews the coffee each morning
and I drink it from my plastic travel mug
a little bit with breakfast
then more on the walk to work
The mug has a picture of a textile on it
A goddamned beautiful Japanese robe
from the collection of the Asian Art Museum
on my ugly plastic travel mug
The mug splashes quite a bit
and today I was walking along
thinking that I should replace it with something less sloshy and less ugly
When I realized there’s this pretty picture on my mug that I never look at
Or rather I look at it every day
but never see it
I take the thing in and out of the cupboard
in and out of my purse
pour coffee into it
wash it out
walk down the street holding it and drinking out of it daily
But it remains invisible
Worse than invisible
I’m sick of it
always the same and never pleasing me
because of its black plastic lid and ugly shape
never minding the one lovely thing about it

And then there’s this thing about falling down the stairs
When I almost fall down stairs
but catch myself
and don’t
(this happens with a certain amount of regularity)
there is a moment
no a fraction of a moment
A fraction of a fraction of a moment
after I fall and before I catch myself
when I can see
even almost feel
exactly how I would tumble all the way down to the bottom
which parts of me would hit which steps
what would twist and strain and knock and bang where
Like seeing the future through physics
Like those people who claim they can see where the pool ball will go
after it bounces off two other balls and the side of the table
because of geometry or something
All the trajectories of all my careening bits are momentarily as clear to me as
lines drawn on a page
this happens in less time than it takes to blink
and I’m pretty sure the fact of its happening
is what keeps me from falling down the stairs after all
enables me to catch myself
because I can feel exactly where each of my flailing limbs are headed
I can feel how to stop them


image source is here