Tea Time Sestina

NAPOWRIMO Day 22

This is my first ever sestina! It's more than a bit rough around the edges, but hey, that's what learning is all about, right? P.S. I'm having an awful time with the formatting, so I appologize if it doesn't look right on your screens!

Tea Time Sestina

When I was younger, my girlfriends and I would gather for tea 

on a summer porch facing a fine garden. There, the sounds of ceramic

and laughter, scents of scones piled with cream, the warmth of sunlight,

sweet of sneaked sugar cubes from the dish, jokes about the highway

at the edge of town which would one day lead to new lives and old age

left our hearts enamored with the future’s beauty.

Too often we talked of movie stars and divine new cars, in regards to beauty;

brains stuffed with the fluff of pop culture nonsense. But during our teas

we tended to our wishes, hopes and dreams, befitting our age,

and so at once felt very young and very wise, and loved that the ceramic

tea sets and their elixir. One by one we grew up, and left for the highway.

Long and unknown, the road was inevitably bright with that warm sunlight.

We found the world a wide, wild place, full of all sorts of sunlight;

some dark and fierce, some blown open, some even pink with beauty,

(New England… Oklahoma… Paris),  making us drive our respective highways

blinded.  Babies. Studies.  Hubbies. Jobs good and cruddy.  And still, our tea.

Truffles and delicate eclairs shaped like swans. Roses on our plates. Gilded ceramic,

and the garden with fat pet rabbit beloved from childhood till old age…

each memory sweet as sugar, the secrets and the victories—and I’m a young age

still, for now. And when I am not, I shall build a porch to catch the sunlight

of the afternoons and evenings, and fill that bright place with the ceramic

remnants of people’s lives bought at estate sales; fragile, breakable beauty

of a mismatched sort, piled with delicate yummies to tempt those reluctant to tea,

perhaps a haven to even those prone to a life too full of the highway.

The day I build that porch may be far down my own stretching highway.

Each day it looks longer and fuller of hills; I think this must be age

hinting I’m finally becoming a grown up lady. Perhaps I should just drink more tea;

I’m determined to be young enough to not know what to believe of the sunlight

on my winding path. In that way, the stress of life becomes a taste of beauty

like bitter cocoa to the chocolate which melts on sunlit antique ceramic.

There are so many metaphors between life and tea. The ceramic

a participant in people’s lives, the drive of those lives down their own highway,

perhaps on the way to a tearoom to gather with friends (that’s true beauty)

and wonder  (when young) what will happen, and then (with age)

remind one another what did; the future and the past all aglow in the sunlight

shining upon a smart group of friends, enjoying a nice long tea.

This is why I love ceramic cracked with use and age

of some other person’s highway, dulled by some other sunlight

and filled with dreams of beauty and hope…such is tea.