when the Coffee Hound’s drink list reads
20-Below Zero White Chocolate,Trout Slayer
Camel Spit, Moose Drool and Peppermint Cowboy
When the owner’s teenage daughter
says at the drive-up window
Hello, can your dog have a treat
And the chipped enamel coffee cup
like your grandfather had on the farm
serves as a tip jar

If you want a bit of adventure you could have
vicarious sips of Crocodile Hunter, Chocolate Fit
Dangerously Red, Drop Kill Murphy’s Irish Cream
Spider Woman or Big Bad Wolf
But mostly you want to sit at the only table
and recover from California with an espresso
Gaze at the refrigerator, the shelves of bottles
holding an inventory of essences that would make
the Starbucks siren fume red

You’re sure dust on the knick-knack shelf
reflects respect for the earth that has grown wheat
barley and hay for over a century
A framed cartoon of a dog hot-tubbing
in a coffee cup reigns over the table
Above which a few vintage Coffee Hound cups    
hang on hooks that might be for sale
but only to customers who fall in love with the place

Bob, Paul and Linda stand
at the bar every morning and shoot the bull
From behind the counter the owner says
Hi Steve, how’s it go’n
Laughs take up residence here
You fall under the spell cast by a plaque
on the wall saying Because Nice Matters

Until you look out the window straight into
a bullet hole at eye level  
You know you’re in Montana
when you drive 30 miles back the next day
for one of those vintage cups


From Trio: Poetrylandia 4 (Wapshott Press, 2020).
Used here with permission.