Laddering Your Tea
Timothy Walsh
My grandmother said you need to ladder your tea
throughout the day,
each cup allowing you to climb a few rungs higher.
Climbing to where she did not say,
but I knew what she meant—
your awareness sharpening, sensations heightening,
the ordinary rendered extraordinary as cup follows cup,
weaving the endless meander of conversation.
Ever since, I have endeavored to ladder my tea
scrupulously,
hearing my grandmother’s voice in the clink of the spoon
against the cup,
stirring in a pat of sweet cream butter—
Connaught gold, she’d say—
each successive cup building a beachhead on its predecessor,
the peat-tinged tea percolating like river water
through your bloodstream,
swift as the Shannon, storied as the Liffey,
your flesh rendered an estuary to enlightenment.
About the Author
Timothy Walsh’s poems and short stories have appeared in The North American Review, Arts & Letters, Cutthroat, The Midwest Quarterly, New Millennium Writings and others. His awards include the Grand Prize in the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition, the Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize from North
American Review, and the Wisconsin Academy Fiction Prize. He is the author of a book of literary criticism, The Dark Matter of Words: Absence, Unknowing, and Emptiness in Literature (Southern
Illinois University Press) and several poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently The Book of Arabella and When the World Was Rear-Wheel Drive. His essays and reviews appear in The Millions, Rain Taxi Review, and others. He is also a songwriter and records with his band Penelope’s Thrill. Listen at https://www.penelopesthrill.com/.
Find more at: timothyawalsh.com