Black Coffee Poet
Jesse Lee
Something about the color black makes me want to write poetry. A black sweater, baggy, warm, and slightly sophisticated. Black coffee, steam rising from the white mug until the early morning silence smells like comfort. Like home. A dark, rainy night, tucked under a blanket and reading an old, weathered novel in the golden pool of lamplight. A journal, given as a present to a budding writer. The ink that stains the pages.
The Danish have a term for this feeling. Pronounced hoo-gah, spelled hygge, and almost untranslatable. It is a time of peace and comfort, a space in which all you have to do is exist happily. The moments of simple pleasures in which the heartbeat slows and the limbs grow heavy, eyelids weighted with warmth. The Danish write books about it, promote it as a lifestyle, make it seem like a new concept. These books are pretty and happily colored, placed on the front display at bookshops. But once again, mankind is generations late.
The Bible has a centuries old term for this lifestyle. Pronounced say-lah, spelled selah, and felt more than translated. It is the space between heartbeats, the moments of everyday life in which God is a constant presence. The feeling of complete rightness as you go about your day, typing at a computer, drinking coffee, walking the street. It is not a lifestyle that requires you to set aside a time for hot drinks and soft blankets, carving out a portion of our day. It is an idea woven seamlessly into your day, prompting you to smile and thank God for cold mornings.
It was a sleepy morning. The kind of morning where even the clouds are too weary to hold themselves aloft, so they sink to rest in rolls of cold fog on the earth. Spider webs draped the bushes like recently abandoned fairy beds. The only sound was the lone bird, a soloist in the dawn chorus. The morning smelled like mist, tasted like black coffee and poetry.