Exiles

Exiles

Exiles

Whenever I make tea,
memories of you surface
like small tricks of proximity;
a temporal sleight of hand.

Years ago in a council flat in Chalk Farm,
we exchanged gifts: mine for the birth of your daughter,
yours Darjeeling tea from the mountains of your birth,
each a marker of origins.

I remember always as I stand pouring boiling water
over leaves darkening at the bottom of the cup,
your affectionate reprimand that day
to let it brew longer, longer than I did then:

your unspoken command
(an unconscious prayer)
to let the leaf know itself fully
in the grace of its sacrifice,

but also your implicit claim
of history as authority:
an instinctive line of defence
against the endless exiles of your present.