The Floating Cup

Photo by Sam Badmaeva on Unsplash

A Poem by A. A. Kostas

the secret about gardens they

don’t want you to know:

within each green boundary

flowering hedge, treed avenue

a floating cup exists 

for you to drink and

you alone.

A bitter and horrid drink,

ashes and rotten fruit on your tongue—

don’t pretend it’s not there

should you lay in verdant shadows

after cusping the hilltops,

the cup will appear

and float toward you.

The cup may be hidden now,

but it will come in time

at the moment of your prepondered victory

how it always comes to me

ever since

the first night which

was also the last

my brothers and sisters slept, but

our master could not

I drifted between shades thrown 

by moonlight, watching the floating cup

he grasped its brutal chalice and drank

belching and heaving

at the stars.

everywhere I come against bitter cups,

no progress made without one—

ignore the cup, refuse its drink and

it appears in the next garden, waiting

black like ego-death.

others have experienced the same,

we speak of it often,

we speak of it as the way

one sister composed a hymn

to sing when we gather:

no way forward without the floating cup

no garden complete without its choice

from the heavens a song erupts

we hear again the Divine voice

A. A. Kostas is a Canadian-Australian writer and lawyer, currently based in Singapore. Most recently, his work has been published or is forthcoming in The Clayjar Review, The Rialto Books Review, After Dinner Conversation and Ekstasis. You can read more of his work on Substack: https://waymarkers.substack.com/