Writing in a Coffee Shop Far From the Bombs of War by Gail Hosking

It’s a perfect place with my vessel of coffee,
this hot liquid the definition of assurance. Or 
is it a meter of everything good like solitude
and the bracelets on my arm, as I look through 
books and type these words, something to be said. 
I am far, far away from those fires across the sea,
far from empty cities, the invisible hurt of the lost 
and dead. I gather sunshine coming through the windows 
and sprawling across my table as I adjust my eyes 
to this new season, which should be all verse and rapture 
with lilacs in the park. Pink magnolias and cherry trees. 
But something has fallen apart as one world marches on 
and another burns to the ground. No matter what
history says. There’s still something to be written, 
though what to say about the unsayable?

Gail Hosking is the author of the memoir Snake's Daughter: The Roads in and out of War, and a collection of poems Retrieval. Her essays and poems have been published in such places as Reed Magazine, Lillith Magazine, South Dakota Review, Post Road, Waxwing and West Trade Review. Several pieces have been anthologized. Three essays were considered "most notable" in Best American Essays. She holds an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and taught at Rochester Institute of Technology for 15 years. She is at work on a memoir about her mother and military life. For more about Gail, please visit her website.