Green & Slightly Bitter
(Theaceae Sinensis)
The flaming cook top licks the toeholds of reality.
These are fundamental concerns, principally about tea leaves.
Each of us has priorities:
You, worried about global warming,
I about the Genus Thea;
you that cities will be inundated,
I, that those who propagate my species
loll, and are as laggard as if intoxicated.
Such is the nature of the symbiotic process: that the 600 billion
cups consumed each year (even more than the telling of beads,
or naming names of the god-head, or of Coca Cola) will cease to be a stimulus,
the Emperor Shen Nung forgotten,
tea ceremonies a “thing” of the past, even in Japan,
where soft drinks, like sugary sodas, have gained an unseemly stature.
Daily I do whatever I can: advertise on the internet,
shout with Moses and the oriental sages from top of the mountain:
Really! To ignore us is preternatural;
it is the congruous life disrespected.
Despair, and like foul weather, you will wither the leaves I have nurtured;
that afternoon ceremonial,
despite participation by a Mad Hatter,
is less social phenomenon than religious ritual.
Lose it and the spirit (along with the pilot)
goes down the tubes in a tail-spin.
No. Take no silly chances. Break open your cookie.
Have your palm read, maybe even by that sexy lady at the corner.
Pour boiling sustenance from blackened kettle
until orange pekoe is brown and aromatic.
Breathe deep. Break bounds.
Sip joy, enhancement, mutual richness.