OUR JAVA CUP

Our java cup
is ready for us
sipping into waking
up from a dream of Chardin
who was visiting me
to paint a gleaming landscape
that wakes a poet's thirst
here by the Seine
reading Rimbaud
while preparing for finals
at the Sorbonne
I meet Sabine who tells me
as the classic scholar in our class
an August rain will not last
nor will Helen or Paris
in the scheme of things
watching a mourning dove
rise about our river
with its wings of shadow play
as silhouetted first light
embraces our scent of passage
from adolescence embracing
the embarrassing dawn.