Emily D Tea Traveler

RE-COVERING TIME

I place a white porcelain cover on the small white porcelain tea pot. Over this, I place the white tea cozy, with the red and beige stripes and two little red birds, seemingly in conversation. I leave them to their private whisperings, give the tea time to steep.
Tea the Drink that Changed the World
Loose tea takes longer than a tea bag. I must find a spoon. I must twist the cover off the tea caddy and dip inside, measure out what I desire, and scatter it into the tea basket. I must let the leaves unfurl in the steamy darkness. Is eight minutes—start to finish—too long to wait for heaven?

Now sipping my Christmas tea, the eight minutes already a memory, I peruse two different books. One about tea, one about bread. I turn the pages slowly, write my favorite lines onto colored cards.

Tea cuttings, I learn, take around one year—or even as much as fifteen months—to reach a stage where they can be planted in the tea garden. Then they must grow 15-18 inches before they are eligible to be severely pruned, and once again take time to grow into a flat table, a plucking table.

Bread is similar, in regards to time. We can use flour artificially aged with bleach and bromate (bromate being outlawed in European countries, because it is a carcinogen). Or we can use flour set out in the air, where oxygen, the very thing we breathe, will refine qualities, ultimately cultivate taste.
Simply Great Breads Sweet and Savory
We don’t have time for the line, said an essay in a book I once reviewed.

The line—a single row of words—have we really no time?

If we have no time for the line, we have no time for loose tea. We have no time for the tea bush, gently coaxed to golden bud. We have no time for finely structured bread.

Let me, let me re-cover time …

for the single line, the tea, the bread.

 
Creme Earl Grey Diamond Mason Jar Tipped
This is a modified reprint from my first writer’s blog.

Read Becoming Emily
Read French and Spanish Tea—The Voice of Passions

L.L. Barkat
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L.L. Barkat

L.L. Barkat is the Managing Editor of Tweetspeak Poetry and the author of six books for grown-ups and four for children, including the popular Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing. She has also served as a writer for The Huffington Post blog. Her poetry has appeared on NPR and at VQR and The Best American Poetry. Her favorite Emily Dickinson poem is Wild Nights! Wild Nights! and she loves a fine jasmine tea.