Day 61: Tea

Poetry glorifies and elevates the small things in life until they glow with shining significance. Love, also, does this. In both states, simple objects can take on all the weight and meaning of complex feelings.

An ordinary ritual, such as making tea, is akin to an exotic one when you are in love, as we see here in this endearing poem by Carol Ann Duffy. Smitten, to say the least.

Tea - Carol Ann Duffy

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day,

as the women harvest the slopes
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.