ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Hot Tea

You're in the office. The phones are mad. The boss is on your case.
It seems you get no peace at all, as through your day you race.
Thank Heavens for that tiny space that comes at half past three.
You get to sip a hot cup of tea.

You're charging down the highway as the hours tick slowly past.
The journey seems unending, though you know you're moving fast.
You take the little thermos that is resting by your knee,
Reviving with a hot drink of tea.

You're out on the verandah, with the summer at its peak.
No one even seems to have the energy to speak.
You know that neither beer nor lemonade will set you free.
It has to be a hot cup of tea.

You're camping in the bush, and the fire is burning low.
The stars are shining fiercely, and the moon is all a-glow.
The water in the creek nearby is bubbling cheerfully.
It's time to put the billy on for tea.

Hot tea. Hot tea. Share it all around.
Drink it an office chair, or cross-legged on the ground.
Drink it charging down the road, or wilting in the heat.
Hot. Tea. Can't. Be. Beat.

© Stephen Whiteside 30.04.2015

This aromatic beverage
so soothing to your senses,
is an Asian evergreen;
Camellia sinensis.

Stephen I used to be a tea drinker until my first pregnancy. Now it tastes like dishwater to me and I can't touch the stuff. Fortunately I found coffee

I still recall my grandmother with her enormous fine china tea pot, measuring out one scoop of tea leaves for each person and one for the pot.

I think the invention of tea bags and the move away from the cermony of making tea kind of spoiled it for me.

If you could substitute RUM for the tea and still make it rhyme that would be a crack Steve.


Bob