Hello, Poetry Friend
We think of tea starting with leaves, but it starts with water. Our life may seem formless and void, an empty cup, but if we have water we have life.
Tea comes after.
What is the quality of the water that comes from your faucet? It will determine the taste of your brew.
My water comes from underground caves, which means it is hard, full of lime, and corrodes appliances. I now have a water softener and a fancy-schmancy filter to purify my water. I was skeptical about the expense, but the saleswoman asked, “Do you drink tea?” and when I admitted that yes, I drink quite a lot of tea — scads of tea! — and she said the filter would take out every other taste and leave me with pure water so that I could really, truly taste my tea … well! I couldn’t hand over my credit card fast enough.
Water is as necessary as blood, both mercies we cannot live without. Not unlike that organ of the body which was known but not labeled until 2018: the interstitium.
Perhaps you missed this news. I know exactly where I was — walking in the dark before another day of helping my dad clean out his house of forty-seven years in preparation to move next door to me. I was listening to a science podcast, trying to give my mind some anchor point in the chaos of sorting, selling, and moving two lifetimes in four weeks, when I learned that we have a part of our anatomy I had never heard of.
The interstitium is interconnective tissue, spread throughout the body. It looks like fluid-filled space, like waterways. Much about it is not yet understood.
What I gained from the podcast was the knowledge that my body is made of space. Of flow. To be creative means nurturing my unseen waterways, making sure my water is a good base for all the words I will drink in and pour out.
Writer’s Villanelle
Tear down the words
It’s time to rebuild.
The sky is a blank page.
Start short, if need be.
Rip out what no longer serves —
tear down old words.
Then go outside. Look up.
Identify each bird that crosses
the sky’s blank page.
Sharpen your pencil, buy a new
notebook and from your heart
tear down the words.
They await you.
Whether cloudy or turquoise, look up
at the sky. It is a blank page
of patience. Secure a draft.
Frame this new dwelling
with words torn down.
The sky is your blank page.
– Megan Willome
Today my teacup is not red. It is a sturdy Yeti that I can easily rinse-and-repeat while I work on the patio, while a crew puts in new flooring. Here, in this interstitial space, under the sky’s blank page, I sip Tazo green ginger and tear down the words.
Happy poeming!
Megan