ME, TEA, AND POETRY

Making my morning tea prior to sitting down at my writing desk is a favorite personal ritual. This morning I put the kettle on and while waiting for the water to boil, chose my tea for this morning of musing and writing. I chose peppermint for its power, lemon for its zest, and cherry for its sweetness. I placed the teabags in a small teapot I had purchased over forty years ago at a yard sale and smiled at the memories of those days which always leap into my mind whenever I brew tea in that teapot. The kettle sang, and I poured the boiling water into the teapot. The tantalizing aromas of blended peppermint, lemon, and cherry arose from the treasured teapot. I sighed with contentment.

My life has seen adventures, quiet moments, passionate lovers, wonderful husbands, sicknesses, deaths, and miracles. Miracles of love. All along the way, tea has been my companion. I learned about herbal teas from books like Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss (which still graces my library shelves) and living herbalists were my teachers too. Some were of indigenous ancestry like a curandero I was taught by in New Mexico and others were from various diverse ancestries and places. All these teachers were possessed of knowledge of the varied and miraculous world of herbs brewed into teas for comfort and medicine. I absorbed this knowledge organically from many experiences and sources. In my youthful years, I grew my own herbs, as well as traversed hills and valleys on rambles collecting herbs in the wild. I also developed a love for black teas that came to the West via the British and others. Chai is one of my favorites to this day.

Now at seventy-five, in my life as a poet, tea is a trusted creative partner. Poetry and tea are so entwined in my life I can’t imagine life without either. I hope I never have to choose.  

This morning with a cup of tea in hand, I sat down at my writing desk and opened my most recent journal. I love the feel of the paper and its smell taking me back to when I began to write as a child. My childhood journals which had been stored in my parents’ home had burned when their home burned to the ground, just before Christmas one year. Thus, the years of my early writings captured in those journals were now only ashes and blurred memories. Yet, I have continued to write my poems, stories, and observational essays filling over two hundred journals in the fifty years since that awful fire. I suppose, if I’m lucky, like Ursula LeGuin who lived into her nineties, I will write until I die, whenever that might be.

This new journal is sitting open on my writing desk with its crisp fresh blank pages beckoning as I sip my tea and muse upon the mysteries of life. I often have found myself mentally exploring various ideas through reading and writing poetry. After a sip of tea, I begin to write.

TIME

Time flows

Who knows

Where time goes?

Is it a line?

Is it a loop?

Does it expand?

Does it contract?

Seasons come and go

And yet nature shows

That in some places

Seasons are not.

In other places

Seasons act as time keepers

Just as the moon and tides do

Water clocks

Sun dials

Towers

Mechanical clocks

Digital clocks

Satellites

These are all ways humans

Have sought and do seek

To harness time

Bringing delusions of control

Over the movements of life

Attempting to fool death

Not possible

As all stories end

So do all lives.

Time is a gift

Make time your friend

So, at life’s end

You can look back

Without regret

At how your life’s journey

Did wend as you traveled along.

I put down my pen and took a long drink from my steadily diminishing cup of tea. I’ll make another cup soon, I thought. I reread what I had written. I was satisfied for now. Later, I thought, I will consider revising, taking some words out and adding others in. I didn’t expect to write about time, but then I never know what to expect when I sit down with a cup of tea, an open heart, a freed mind, and a blank page. For me, journaling is a sacred time of reflecting and writing, sharing poems, stories, and pictures of my inner life within my journals. I have done this for myself and will continue to do so. I reread my journals frequently. They are a source of inspiration and ideas. I do not know if anyone else will ever read them. Though, it is possible there are thought-gems in them yet to be discovered by me or someone else.

I picked up my cup and returned to the kitchen where the friendly, petite teapot sat under the tea cozy staying warm. I poured myself a second cup of tea emptying the teapot. I took a sip; it was still the perfect temperature and delicious.

On my way back to my writing desk, I stopped at a shelf that housed my journals covering the last decade. I pulled one at random, which I often did in order to further explore patterns and themes that have shown up in my writings. Time is one such theme. Another such theme is change. Sitting at my writing desk, sipping my tea, I perused my writings in the journal I had plucked from the shelf. My eyes fell upon a poem I had written some years back that brought the themes of time and change together in one poem.

TIME AND CHANGE

Stone by stone

River by river

Tree by tree

Land by land

Multiple grains of sand

Collected together stand

Beach by beach

Cliff by cliff

Forest by forest

Sea by sea

Time-waves rise and fall.

Star by star

Planet by planet

Sunrises by sunsets

Reef by reef

Island by island

Mountain by mountain

Change flows near and far

Human by human

Village by village

City by city

Civilization by civilization

All come and go

As time doth flow.

Day by day

Night by night

Calling us to know

Constant change is the rule

And to this axiom

We must surrender

And then, rise up

To be the change

We wish to see.

I leaned back in my chair and lifted my teacup to my lips. So many years, so much writing, so many changes, so many cups of tea. Friendships that endured and those that did not. Treasured loved ones I have buried and mourned. Loved ones with me now as this chapter of renewal unfolds.

Now, I am blessed by the gift of my latest beloved one. He has been gifted to me as a husband, friend, lover, artist, and devoted life partner. To the best of my ability, I have gratefully, graciously, and humbly accepted him with a full heart. He has awakened new paths of creativity in me through visual art, which I have always enjoyed as a source of inspiration for my poetic mind, but now poems come pouring out of me visually and viscerally in paintings using many media. Truly, poems are pictures and pictures are poems. I don't remember who wrote that, but I didn't make it up. I got it from a book I once had. Maybe that book is still hiding somewhere in this house. Later, I will use the wizardry of modern technology and ask "the google," like the Oracle of Delphi in Ancient Greece, about the origin of that quote. All this thinking about poems and pictures makes me gaze at one of my paintings hanging above my writing desk. It is a piece that celebrates the power of the pen over the sword. I thought, words matter. Words always matter. Although words can be misunderstood and deceptive, words can also reveal truths and uplift us. Words really do matter.

I sip my tea and muse aloud to myself. If the journey of my life thus far has taught me anything, it is that truly there are no accidents. What one might perceive as an accident is truly just a turn in the road that came unexpectedly but came none the less. Such turns are usually sudden. I thought about the truism I had learned through many experiences and stories that it isn’t what happens to us in life so much as how we respond to what happens that matters. Poetry has been, and continues to be, a gift for me to respond to what happens. I am very grateful for that gift. And now, thanks to my latest beloved one, painting has become another way for me to creatively respond to what happens.

It struck me anew that at every turn of the road in my life, I had come to the exact place I needed to be for the next stage of my growth as an imaginative, free-minded, curious, loving person seeking truth. I sipped my tea and smiled as memories of people and places played like a movie in my mind. I am grateful for the contributions to my growth made by them all, whether their contribution was rough or smooth, sour or sweet, it all mattered on the road to becoming upon which I still travel with tea as my constant companion. I smiled to myself remembering something a fellow poet I knew in my youth said to me, “Queen Tea will be your solace and your muse if you allow Her into your mind and heart.” That had certainly proven true on my life journey thus far.

What changes will happen next? As my journey continues, only time will tell. For now, as long as the tea holds out, that is enough for me.