Ceremonial Grade White Tea
A plain white wrapper
Tightly packed buds
The Sweet and Creamy essence
Protrude the packaging and
Caress my nose
Slowly but surely,
The brewer pries apart the leaves.
Some points give away easily
But others take more care and
Poking
To come apart.
Almost as if the tea knows
Who it can trust and chooses
Who it can be held by.
The brewer places the leaves
In a steamy gaiwan, then give it a sniff.
Once more the creamy aroma hugs the nose
Of the brewer ever so softly.
The tea is given a rinse and finally,
The first infusion is brewed.
The leaves don't open to the brewer
Immediately.
It takes some time.
One cannot just use volcanic water
To understand this tea. It will only respond
With bitterness and bad taste.
Forever leaving the bad brewer with a terrible impression,
Never to come back to this tea.
One cannot use too cold water,
For it will leave them with no taste at all.
One cannot quickly drink the tea,
They must think deeply and truly taste.
To the bad brewer, this ever so light tea
Will only taste like plain water.
No, one must use just the right temperature
Of hot water. One must brew the right number of
Seconds. One must appreciate deeply the taste.
One must treat the tea with love.
To treat the tea with love is to experience all the
Complexities of flavor: the sweetness, the nuttiness,
The creaminess and the astringency.
Tasting as if it has been aged many years,
Yet is still so young.
All the flavors
Can so easily be missed or misunderstood.
Never to be
Deciphered by a bad brewer.
Although, even a good brewer can make bad brewer mistakes.
Yet the tea offers forgiveness and
Change with the
Next infusion.
With each infusion there is a slightly
New flavor. The entire session of tea
Is a journey.
Then, eventually, the tea begins to fade
And can yield no more flavor…
Until the brewer simmers the tea
And reveals a whole new side of the flavors;
And opens an extension of the
Tea to brewer relationship.
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