Snow Water

A short poem to enjoy with a cup of tea ...

Snow Water
By Michael Longley

A fastidious brewer of tea, a tea
Connoisseur as well as a poet,
I modestly request on my sixtieth
Birthday a gift of snow water.

Tea steam and ink stains. Single-
Mindedly I scald my teapot and
Measure out some Silver Needles Tea,
Enough for a second steeping.

Other favourites include Clear
Distance and Eyebrows of Longevity
Or, from the precarious mountain peaks,
Cloud Mist Tea (quite delectable)

Which competent monkeys harvest
Filling their baskets with choice leaves
And bringing them down to where I wait
With my crock of snow water.

While I'm not familiar with Clear Distance as a tea, I do carry Silver Needle, one that can be called Eyebrows of Longevity and Cloud Mist tea. All you need is the snow water. Many of us have access to plenty of that!

The Sixth of January

The Sixth of January
by David Budbill

The cat sits on the back of the sofa looking
out the window through the softly falling snow
at the last bit of gray light.

I can't say the sun is going down.
We haven't seen the sun for two months.
Who cares?

I am sitting in the blue chair listening to this stillness.
The only sound: the occasional gurgle of tea
coming out of the pot and into the cup.

How can this be?
Such calm, such peace, such solitude
in this world of woe.

From Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse (Copper Canyon Press)

Green Tea by Dale Ritterbusch

Cool poem found today:

Green Tea

by Dale Ritterbusch

There is this tea
I have sometimes,
Pan Long Ying Hao,
so tightly curled
it looks like tiny roots
gnarled, a greenish-gray.
When it steeps, it opens
the way you woke this morning,
stretching, your hands behind
your head, back arched,
toes pointing, a smile steeped
in ceremony, a celebration,
the reaching of your arms.

"Green Tea" by Dale Ritterbusch, from Far From the Temple of Heaven. © Black Moss Press, 2005.