✨ The Commerce of Tea

Sell me your tea by the ship load...

The Commerce of Tea

Sell me your tea by the ship load and
I will love you a year’s worth of memories.
Fortunes like yours were sold down the river.
How much tea can we sell in our cabinet colony,
crammed like a psyche, soothed with cream?
How much tea can we sell, asked the business man?
How much tea can we sell in a year? Calculate that
not once but twice, walking up the side of our mountain.

For a ride up our mountain I would wait, silvered
Cup in hand. Tea leaves and tender hearts met
on the mountain. How much tea can we tax,
asked the tax man?
How much tea can we drink, was the reply.
The tax man grinned.
There was tea for sale under the ship’s sail
until taxed too much; then the taste was lost
and with it, the empire.

—Glynn Young

“The Commerce of Tea” was woven by Glynn Young from tweets at a Tweetspeak Twitter party. Used by permission of Tweetspeak Poetry. Photo by Onur Kayacı, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.