This poem by our member David Smith, was selected for and published in Folio #74, in 2020.
Storms in Teacups
(V’s Kitchen)
Tea brewed black in a red enamel pot,
companion piece to the whistle-topped kettle
that fills the kitchen from breakfast to bedtime
with steam.
Laughter. Always laughter.
Happy laughter, and the bitter-sweet blend
that’s brewed in tears
from fond recollections of safe-haven islands
in terrible stormy seas.
I didn’t know then how these days would stay with me:
they were just days, like all the others.
I didn’t know the loss of them then,
my world too small, my horizons too close
to see that far into the future.
Here was the place I learned about death,
learned that a train could steal someone away forever,
that fear of life could be greater than the other.
That lesson, and the smell of gas before the jet takes the match,
accompanied me through the years between
and all the worlds within them, and,
remembering,
I can find myself again in a dream of the time
when there was just one world,
filled with laughter and black-brewed loose-leaf tea
in a red enamel pot.
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