This coffee is like a miracle:
oil-slick black,
thick as night,
a transmutation of water
which has journeyed through deep earth
to emerge, by a secret ministry,
worlds different from before.
Water has lifted out the spirit of the grounds.
They brood together now, darkly locked,
held by a spell that cannot
be reversed.
I drink:
its force is a kick,
a slap of the sea
in a cave,
lapping its secrets of ocean.
I wreathe it round with the burning
of tobacco:
leaf turns to flame turns
to smoke,
rising like an offering,
winnowing
up…
It stirs in me - like crystals of sugar
revolving, dissolving -
a cry for transmutation.
My body and my mind are soothed,
are roused - strangely both -
but what can reach my spirit?
The wind rattles at the window,
there is a stirring abroad…
God, or spirit, or presence,
how can I pass my spirit through you,
fuse myself into something new?
Like coffee, like smoke, I cry,
transmute my spirit too.
Mark Hamilton
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/transmutation-5/
