Tish Davis: HIGH TEA

Every season my father changes the color of mom’s place mat, but our monthly dinners are always the same. We sit in the kitchen not far from her obituary still pinned to the board on the door; his eyes wander to the only colored square without a plate.

Today the mat on the table is gone. The tea is ready, but instead of pouring from the copper kettle, he is brewing it in my mother’s Aynsley pot—Cottage Garden. I carry it into the dining room where the sugar bowl and creamer are carefully arranged on white. For the first time I notice the delicate swirls in the pattern and when the doorbell rings, the third cup not far from his.

under a porch light
the first buds
of spring
.

.

by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio
first published in Simply Haiku V6, N4 (Winter 2008)