Black Coffee

Few of my mother’s strictures

lasted beyond initial observance

but one has been staunchly held.

There is no coffee but black coffee

and widowed mom was its prophet.

I trained from early adolescence

in caffeinated uber consciousness,

a belief reinforced in the Navy,

where my bosun mates and I drank

only black from an unwashed pot.

Now in dotage, my surviving vice

is tongue curling Italian dark roast,

although I’ve had to cut back

three to two to one and a half cups

to keep from prematurely achieving

a terminal paradisical palpitation.