A CUP OF TEA

By Alvette E Jeffers

Have you had your cup of tea,

paused between sips to think of me?

We’re you stimulated, enough to desire a moment of tenderness,

or

to risk engagement with a stranger?

Does its steam which appears like an apparition soon to fade in a blink,

the agonizing reminder of how soon what is, can in time, becomes what was?

I am thinking on this grey, cold, Winter’s morn how much a warm cup of black tea enhances my disposition, and this congenital moment is all I can count on.

Outside, each atonal note of a distant Church bell

reverberates an unsettling omen.

The discordant sirens of death chasers ache my ear and mute the mourners’ wail.

I know I must resist this invading somberness,

the dirge within the growling winds.

But this black tea, which has succumb to the chill of Winter,

and in the process, lost its tang is just an existential metaphor.

Come tomorrow,

a cup of black tea will still be the measurement of my comfort.

(1/26/2021. Written in the time of Covid )