Thursday, August 30, 2007

Ode to a cup of tea

By Adam Gibson ©

you save me and

bathe me
ground me in history with
memories of
grandma and grandpa's flat,
the sit-down time
upon return from any trip,
the link to something bigger,
the quench of home
and the days of mum and dad
and everynights
and everymornings.

the putting of the kettle on,
the frantic burble towards boiling,
the scooping of the tea into the pot,
the piping sizzle of the water being poured in,
the specific time it takes for the tea to draw
giving the pot a 'trip up the river'
- an urging swirl - if time is tight,
then the pouring from teapot to pre-milked cup,
the measuring towards the correct tone of tan
for the particular drinker.

my love of tea
will not be diminished by the advances
of the PR Officers of flat whites
or the lieutenants of lattes,
it will not be denigrated by the
urgers of orange juice
or the freshly-squeezed boosters
of something-or-others.

when deaths have accrued
and lovers have decided
they are in love no more,
when cars have been crashed
and houses bought or children born,
the Lan Choo and the Liptons,
the Madurah and the Dilmah
will be there for ready relief,
rescue in time of rescuing,
there to bathe you
or to save you,
whatever the case may be.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd just rewrite the two lines in the last verse. Should be something like "the Dilmah and the Dilmah/The Dilmah and the Dilmah." I could read a poem about tea every day for a year. x LL

Anonymous said...

Sometimes when i drink a cuppa here, i get so incredibly homesick, from a simple cuppa, and you have been able to, once again wie so oft, pinpoint so many reasons why.
The Ritual of the Habit

Benito Di Fonzo said...

Never got the whole tea thing myself. Maybe it's just growing up in an Irish-Italian family in western Sydney that brewed it's own sambucca, but a drink of the demon is the only way I could ever start or end anything.

Tea? It doesn't do a thing! Waste of good hot water if you ask me.

Of course the ideal heart-starter before any task is a liquor-coffee, works like a legal and less damaging speed-ball, but like I say, maybe it's just a wog thing.

Anonymous said...

i love tea.
and biscuits.

:-)