True Love of Coffee

I whispered her name under my breath, as if I was saying good-bye to a lover who would never realize how I felt. For once in my life I thought about that moment not like I had done before, but finally like I was alive. I could feel so much more than the denial I had carried through my past. While I cared beyond words for her, she would simply turn from me as I quietly said a good-bye she would never understand.

I dared not believe in such trivial thoughts of love. Yet I did. Somewhere within me was a defiant heart that would never back down from my own emotions. They could perhaps define part of me, and they would always inspire me to be something greater than I was. I was just a man, a man with a hope that sat idle in my dreams as I tried to make them reality. My life wasn’t a place I could hope to rationalize… and my heart may never again be brave enough to feel this way twice. For all my faith in love, a tragic flaw in the equation reminded me that I was wonderfully alone. That was how destiny decided to declare love in a true story of heartfelt feeling.

Yet was destiny breaking itself or was it merely defining the path of a romantic locked in purgatory? Hell is not a prison unless you choose it to be.

Two days later the answer to that question, one simple phrase- was detailed by the inquisitive insights of an old man who was writing prose under an old oak tree in the park. I saw him sitting there; he was probably in his mid seventies, dressed in a proper brown suit and an old leather hat. He was sitting on his jacket, slowly scribbling away in a weathered journal that reminded me of my own.

Without asking I sat down next to him against the tree. He paused for a moment and I could tell from his eyes that his thoughts were more meaningful than my own. I thought it was pretty ironic that two romantic souls could choose the same old oak tree.

I took a thermos from my bag, sat two cups in front of me, and slowly poured a cup of coffee for each of us. I looked at him as I smiled and said “I believe that one romantic poet sitting beneath an oak tree is cliché, but two romantic poets sharing a cup of coffee under an old oak tree makes us brothers”

He chuckled and took the coffee from my hand. As the aroma of the Irish Crème peaked his interest, he replied “how do you know I’m a romantic?”

“No one writes about themselves like that in such a journal. The way you glanced at the clouds, the way you hold the pages in your hands, even the way you sat there gazing at each letter as it formed a word in your mind defined you as a lover. I don’t know if you only love the words you write or if you love the subject that lives on the page, but whatever it is… I can tell you that your heart cares for every phrase as you read it”

I paused, took a sip of my coffee, and added “besides, any man who takes the time to write with such love in his thoughts is most definitely a romantic. Any romantic, by mere necessity, deserves a cup of hot coffee to remind themselves of the flavours we experience in life.”

“Young man, you are quite right. I am a romantic. I was writing about my wife, god bless her.”

I could tell by the way his words came with yearning, that his wife, the love of his heart, was gone from this life. Yet he was just like me, the love he felt for a woman was still with him, long after destiny had changed the way we found ourselves wandering through life.

He looked at me and chuckled again- “You know its easier if you let yourself fall all the way. You can’t fly forever; eventually one day you realize that you’ve lost your wings.”

I pondered for a moment as the sharp taste in my mouth reminded me of why I was there. “You know sir, I can admit to falling. I can also admit to never flying again. Yet I can’t say that I ever figured out which came first. I think that falling is how I learned how to fly. Without loving, without the dreams I shared, I would never have known that right now I am on the ground.”

“Two poets abused, is that what we are?” he inquired as he sipped from his cup.

”No, we are two men who choose how to fly, knowing that while we may sit here beneath a tree, writing in our journals of meandering thoughts- that we may inspire someone to fall in love again. It is our words sir, that define how perfectly human we are.”

He laughed “Are we human? I would sometimes argue that with my wife.”

“I think we are. I think my heart is. I care to live fully; to feel my life. Should I fall, again and again, I will gladly suffer the consequences of my actions. I will hold myself to a dream of living alone if need be…      because in my own way, to the way that I can love… I will never be alone.”

“Son, you sound too much like me when I was younger.”

“Sir, perhaps both of us just accept how we live. You can’t dream without feeling… and the testament of us sitting here and sharing our thoughts only gives me the hope that forty years from now, I sit down under an old oak tree and find myself talking with some young man who is inspired by how I lived my life, or the fact that I still love the woman who destiny took out of my life. I can only hope sir, that I find someone who inspires my heart like your wife did for you, so that I can one day lend that inspiration to someone like me.”

“Son, why do you think what I write is so inspirational?”

“I apologize sir. I’m younger than you, when I walked by I heard you mutter a phrase under your breath as you finished the page before I sat down.”

“You heard that?” He was perplexed by the ability of youthful ears.

”Yes sir.” I said with a smile. “Anyone who has the urge to say “I love you” as he writes it- is definitely someone who understands what the feeling is all about.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 5:31 am and is filed under Romantic, Creative Writing, Love, Coffee - Volume Two. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.