matcha and memories

I wrote a poem, originally posted at my fiction blog as a writing prompt for Madison Woods. A comment by one of the readers VB Holmes stopped me. If you have concussion symptoms from a silly bicycle crash ( on top of a lifetime’s worth of ringing bells from rugby ) cancer complicates things. You can wonder what causes things, wonder what are memories, and what are we?

memories, browning leaves so tenuously cling
to branch but rattle amidst the breeze
as if to say, I was here, mark my presence
lest I am forever gone

How glorious the shade of summer
where we kicked off our shoes and
danced and lived protected from the sun
and hard harsh illumination

but autumn deepens as does night
and one by one they drift away
released floating just beyond our grasp
what shelter from a barren tree

But VB so insightfully commented

…offer a thought on your observation to Claireful: “…if leaves are our memories, at the end of autumn, what are we?” We are the progenitors of those memories which, like fallen leaves, enrich the soil where new ones grow from old roots and carry forth a recollection of their origins.

Some things work at the cellular level much beyond my control, and resolve themselves as they will. But today at lunch, I ordered iced tea, iced green tea. And at the first sip, it exploded across my taste buds with the rich sensual flavor of roasted rice intermingled with subtle green tea. It was matcha, gunpower fine, worthy of a tea ceremony. I savored each sip above my meal. Beauty surrounds us, we just need to find it.

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