One Day

They are the same words
we have heard in passing through our random days
in the midst of hurried meals and afterthought
until one day they crystallize
becoming movement.

Musing

matcha at home

Creativity, tempered by a framework, and its antinomy: messy, unbridled in thought and expression - I often find myself between the two.

monkey-picked oolong and macarons at Dream About Tea, Evanston

A Return

I return to my favorite sencha today, after a hiatus of months -hardly slumming during the interim, as I had been drinking gyokuro with regularity.

The reunion was a revelation.  This sencha, an asamushi, is one that I have always liked for its chameleon nature: freshly-cut grass in one sip, only to segue into a pool of brininess with the next sip.

I saw again with pleasure the pale green liquor, the sediments of varied greens against white porcelain, tasted the familiar notes now more accentuated after an absence.

The Walk

Lincoln Park Conservatory

We start out encased
forming tendrils along the way
on our words, glances, touch
softening a solitary walk.


photo by E

Drinking Tea

Hong Yue, 1st infusion

I go back to the leaves
steeping, delicate wisp of their essence
could always be present for me
unchanging in their mutability
a reminder of balance.

To My Patients

Outside the Poetry Foundation, Chicago

At the first sounds of the words
that denote, then connote
states alien to me until now
I hear those utterances in my own voice
to you, who have known the waiting
in the uncertainty of the unnamed.

So this wrinkle will settle into the seams of my life
blurring a little the line between us.

Seek

Bai Hao

I revisit the house again
in ways found only in dreams of metaphorical night.

A room of darkness
away from the mask of laughter
and deferrals of truth.

Arise, arise into the quest.