Every day I think of you.
You both boarded us in new East Berlin, took us to the fancy store, toured the Metropolis stage. We could just afford to buy a tea timer, the best of Lang’s social control.
I turn it over each day as I make my tea and think of you and yours for exactly three minutes.
Tea made with forgiving water we all must use.
I think of you with fondness after decades of friendship (with occasional knots) My hope being made of the world shifting just a bit more slowly than my wish. I wonder if your friend who was planning to work in Africa is somewhere making tea?
You remain solid, dedicated in Africa, a devastated inner city volunteer helping children, bringing fresh water every week, teaching art.
You once gave me a hand made wooden spoon, every day I use it to stir my tea drinking a prayer for your safety.
It was in the middle of the last century you gave me a hand painted mug in celebration of my birth. Pastel brushed elephants and balloons, life is still a circus.
I was yet too small to hold it, I never met you, don’t know what you look like.
I drink tea from that mug, my first hoarded treasure.
Every day I thank you, working the same earth that I worked – from can to can’t – as a child picking weeds and grubbing bugs. World away field, daily toil and devotion familiar earth taste in my mouth. Your labor enriching countless every day – your hands slake my thirst, your spoon holds my flavor, your mug bears my childhood, your timer works upside down.
The tea tastes good.
