Rain And Earl Grey Tea Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

Rain drizzles down the window
Too softly to make a sound
Only the absent light
And lingering damp
Hint at the less then clement weather.

Like an artist contemplating a composition
I gaze at my tea cup sitting on the table to my left
Steam no longer rising, carrying its citrus scent,
Half-filled with now tepid tea,
Reflecting back at me
My own apathy.

I could steep a new pot.
I should write
Or at least read
Yet I sit
Listless as the leafy dregs
At the bottom of my weak tea.

I could sit at my computer and type
But does the world need more words?
Today everything feels regurgitated
As if everything said is never really heard.

At twenty-one my son reads greedily,
Racing to fill his mind with facts
As fast as he can absorb and map them
In the neural network I picture pulsing in his skull.

I find myself pruning mine
Wondering why I tended these feelings
Or allowed these theories to take root
When nothing ever seems to come to fruit.

Maybe this is the path to enlightenment,
Hacked through the undergrowth of untamed beliefs.
Maybe it is in the autumn of life
When broad green leaves of ambitions and dreams
Begin to wither and drop from the vine
That the self is exposed as a single thread
Stretching out towards the sun for a season
Intertwining in a jungle with numberless others
Each believing itself to be unique.

Maybe my fantasies blazed red and yellow,
Like fall foliage in a temperate climate
And now it is time for me to retreat to my roots
And dream of the amnesia of a new spring.