NP Of tea, of light, of inkstains on brown paper

[Joseph Tracy]

I have been workng for a long time on a series of ink drawings and now poems to go with them as a book. 
One of my earliest poetic heroes was the beat poet Kenneth Patchen, who in his later years, did wonderful drawings to go with his hand-lettered poems.

so I just finished ( i’m pretty sure) the 17th poem for the facing page of the 17th drawing. ( They all connect)
and noticed the of, of sentence at the end which reminded me of my last post about Saure’s face. So what the hell, here it is. 1st the drawing and then the poem. Yes I love tea, Especially matcha.  This one is the middle of 3 drawings and poems. The core theme of the 3 is light and vision through water, through eyes, and through glass lenses.



Tea

High country cloud forest
wet grass, white flowers, green tea leaves
birdsong 
the winged ones sail the winds of their aerial playground.

Shafts of light shift and slide and dapple dance
across the hills,
along the shine and shade of rows of tea,
filling the pupils and rims of bird eyes, 
bending and gathering, pooling and flowing through 
the contours of a glass teacup,
spilling in waves 
over the woven checkerboard 
 tabletop map of mind,
slicing open the moon,
pouring through the windows 
of dragonfly wings,
connecting 
memory  to moment
morning to night,
awakening the seeds 
within

to sprout and rise from  compression of earthy density 
into  soaring patterns of airborne delight
and waterborne wonder