The Smell of Late Afternoon Coffee

Mixed with the frying of peppers
and onions for the bratwursts
I’ll have for supper makes the lack of sleep
and hard day’s work
all fade like a torn and tattered
book of to-do lists.

Crimped and winkled they flow away
and I think about my squash growing
in the yard and how I have become
the accidental gardener
and how I have aged, not well,
but still aged into someone

I used to admire, and yet,
now I wonder if the old man
in the slightly dirty hat and long sleeve
button down shirt is anything other
than just another old man.

But the coffee tastes good
and I don’t think about
the pointlessness of life,
mine and everyone else’s.

The peppers and onions and brats
make me think of the county fairs
I have been to, with unsafe roller coasters
and sticky cotton candy fingers
and life doesn’t seem pointless after all.