MORNING TEA BANTER (Conversations with Stick Series #5)

…what /do they know of warnings and misfortune?/ Leaf of the cherry, red heart, organ of fire: /…I name you as if I could thread your bones;/ I name you not knowing your mystery.---From “Night-leaf Tarot” by Luisa A. Igloria

MORNING TEA BANTER

That dream of some rain in the dead of night,
what do you make of it, Stick? I ask my errant
escort leaning on the porch wall at tea time.

“Huh? What rain? Who is in pain?” It blustered.
More riddles than secrets fly with the wind:
the mystique lurks in strewn cherry blossoms.

Like tea leaves in divining cups at the temple,
the petals now pell-mell on the pavement beg
for a name to pin her will-o’-the-wisp down.

Where, in what undiscovered country, would
she find the luring shadow of her vision?
Or is it a yearning these leaves could not see?

“A tea-leaf? Did you see the absconding thief?”
A roused Stick, rocked from wooden stupor,
growled. I swirled the tea leaves down the pot,

and poured a steaming spot into my empty cup,
straining to see through its roiled and rippled
surface if the redheart leaf bodes fortune or grief.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-28-11

Poem Prompt: "Night-leaf Tarot" by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-27-11, http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/