Orange You Glad

You came here, after dropping the kids off,
late again, after another bad night, wakeups at two and five,
after circling from bedroom to bedroom

for half an hour, trying to wake the seven-year-old,
the nine-year-old, the forty-four-year-old, in turn,
and I am also forty-four, in the middle of my life

in the middle of a metaphorical dark
wood, but actually, it’s literal woodsmoke
that I smell, here at Second Best Coffee,

shavings of orange wood heaped in the center
of a smoking puck on a drink called Orange You Glad,
decaf, as I’ve been trying to swear off caffeine,

since I fly off the handle faster on it, how I keep pushing
my exhausted body forward, disregarding the protest
of ligament and tendon, the very stuff that holds me together

starting to fray from what I force myself to do, just as I
forced everyone awake this morning, past the moans
and screams of protest, until I, too, am screaming

in the bathroom as I try to get the contact lens
on my son’s left index finger, No, mom,
it won’t work, so I compose myself, put it on my own

fingertip while my son holds his left eye open
with both hands, a flash of A Clockwork Orange,
but I ignore it, trying to get the slippery disc to stick

to his eye instead of my finger, and today is a double drop-off,
the clock is ticking, and hustling the kids out the door,
I see a hawk land beside us.

Look, I say, at the hawk, gently turning my daughter
to face brown and white feathers, still fluffy.
A juvenile. My son nestles against my side.

The hawk flies off, disappearing behind the trees.
The daily rush begins again, the kids squabbling in the car,
I mix up which I should drop off first, pull an illegal U-turn

but manage to get one there at eight, the other arriving
on the heels of the last bus, so we made it, at least close
to made it, and while so tired of the grind, the mad dash

and scramble, the stepped-on Legos, left-behind water bottle,
all the things you can’t find in the house, right now,
aren’t you glad for it, for this life, for trying something

new, your surprise when Leia, the barista, drops a sphere
of ice into a cut-glass tumbler, pours in a decoction of
Ethiopian espresso, orange bitters, sugar, adds a fresh

curl of orange peel and places the smoking puck
atop the glass, then takes out a little torch,
and a bright blue flame licks the wood, and little orange

tongues arch up to lick the blue while smoke billows
downward, an elegant, sinuous cascade. Enjoy, she says,
and the fragrant smoke eddies around the flowers

and designs tattooed on her forearm as she sets the glass
before me, and I catch a glimpse of forever
written among the petals. Forever, this moment,

this moment cannot last forever, but aren’t you glad
you are here, the black ink saying maybe we
can make a little permanence, we can make it,

mark it, here. You are here. A sphere of ice
is slowly melting. A hawk circles overhead.
The smell of woodsmoke has yet to dissipate.