I go out alone...

I go out alone, for a cup of coffee.
To break up my day at home,
but also to hear fresh the ambiance of the day.
The city street lends a new tone,
a composition of cacophony,
not unfounded in the window of my small apartment,
but different enough from the idle chatter
that leaks through the clear pane
and too long heard turns to silence.

But here in a busy coffee house,
maybe even a bistro, I gander,
the onomatopoeia is too trite to write,
almost too clear to hear.
But I do enjoy the clapping
 of the rain on the door frame.
And the flapping of the candle
by which I write, it seems
to cut between two worlds,
desperately pulling between them.

The hot hiss of an espresso machine
reminds me faintly of home,
in a frigid winter spent fondly
in and out of the house in equal measure.
The cognitive images drain through
my mind like the memories
of a vivid dream
immediately upon waking,
or the frightful water
sheltering away after a shower
into that hole that most assuredly
journeys through the earth,
to the ocean,
whatever that is.