Leaves

Please;

don’t offer to brew me my favourite tea,
unless you possess the sweetest loose leaves.

Those bags are abhorant;
their taste does not warrant
the honoured bestowal
with the legendary motto of the late Earl Grey,
who, as you may know,
once was political head of the nation
now laughably named the UK.

Loose leaves are a fragrant,
attractive, and blantantly
vastly superior, exquisite treat,
to feeble tea sweepings, both tasteless and sad,
so slyly concealed in a pale, perforated,
limp paper bag.

Please, don’t be confused
between
tea that’s infused
— a spoon for each person and one for the pot,
in water that’s steaming and scaldingly hot —
so lovingly strained, poured into a teacup
of fine bone china or slim porcelain,
daintily lifted and sipped at my leisure,
caressing my palate with citrusy pleasure…
and
dust that is dumped in a thick, chunky mug
— printed with some vulger caption or image —
to be vacantly swilled or unwillingly gulped.

The Daily Post #Infuse

©Jane Paterson Basil