TEA
In tea leaves
I read my fortune,
journeys past
and yet to come.
Orange pekoe
was my grandmother,
dawn leavetakings
from Flagstaff, trains passing
in the lonely hours of the night.
Against those departures,
a comforting circle
of yellow lamplight, tea,
which reassures me even now.
Lapsang Souchong, my father
called Old Indian Moccasins,
smoky and exotic
as the Old Prospector’s Shop
where in my teens I bought
crepe paper flowers
from somewhere in Mexico,
holding within themselves,
their folds, whispered and deep,
a whiff of copper, the bewitching
smell of unaccustomed distances.
In Hawaii we learned
the almost sacramental genmai cha,
green tea with toasted rice,
shared from a sly-lipped pot
with our kupuna friends
in the big airy dining room
of the rustic hotel near Captain Cook,
with wooden walls and floors
and those friendly old screens
welcoming ocean breezes in.
At Tassajara, in its far valley,
peppermint tea, delicious, iced,
after waking at dawn to running bells,
rising to walk down soft footpaths
to the bath house, still half asleep,
and sit in one of the hot springs
under a bough of pine, moon fading
to a watermark as daylight takes the sky,
while others chant in the zendo
and in the kitchen bread is baking—
seeded, rounded, full.
At the long-vanished teahouse
on one of old Palo Alto’s downtown streets,
in a warren of galleries and bookstores
and the futon shop, Earl Gray
and finger sandwiches, its fragrance
telling of the past and things to come.
A moment of quiet reflection before
stepping out the door again to go on
shopping for my best friend’s wedding dress.
And finally,
at The Teahouse on Canyon Road,
back home, yet not, never again,
plum cinnamon or pepper berry—
fragrant teas, far too many to try.
For I am out of time.
Mornings, walking the labyrinth
barefoot, time and again, before
heading on to the hospital.
Needing the tea for the solace
it’s always offered in the past.
Having this time to pour it
out myself, drink it alone.
images:
Pierre Bonnard, Breakfast or Lunch
WWII teacup, Etsy
Japanese teapot, Oitomi
A Reader Lives teacup, saucer, and spoon
