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Salt in the Tea

by Max Bouillet

She picks wildflowers
from old graveyards
and gently places them
in hot water
in order to make tea.

She sips it late at night
and the dreams of the dead
flutter behind her eyelids.

Tears make the tea salty
and soon the spirits
cry her to sleep.

The dead carry her to bed,
tuck her in,
and wait patiently
for their friend to join them.

04/22/2005

Posted on 04/23/2005
Copyright © 2024 Max Bouillet

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Ulyss Rubey on 04/23/05 at 03:15 AM

hauntingly strange and beautiful

Posted by Agnes Eva on 04/23/05 at 03:25 AM

hmmm, yes it's sad. drew me in

Posted by Alex Smyth on 04/23/05 at 03:25 AM

Aching, yes, when all that a person loves has gone, and nothing to fill the void but dreams of restoration. The last stanza takes it from hauntingly futile to hauntingly tender. Good one, Max.

Posted by Graeme Fielden on 04/23/05 at 11:31 AM

Haunting an and cosmically insightful, Br Maxwell...cool stuff... :)

Posted by Michelle Angelini on 04/23/05 at 06:44 PM

Excellent Max. A beautiful, bittersweet memory. The more I read it, the more I like it.
~Chelle~

Posted by Quentin S Clingerman on 04/24/05 at 01:42 AM

Certainly original! Giftedly so! It is an intriguing view of dealing with death.

Posted by David R Spellman on 04/24/05 at 03:03 PM

definitely haunting and quite eerie - a masterful stroke!

Posted by Christina Bruno on 04/24/05 at 05:35 PM

oo! it almost reminds me of robert frost...i love the way the poem carries, great work

Posted by Michele Schottelkorb on 04/25/05 at 04:41 PM

oh, this is rich... perchance would you know where i could find this macabre beauty?

Posted by Traci Mabats on 04/27/05 at 03:26 AM

Morbid Max, this is why I drink coffee :)

Posted by Laura Doom on 04/27/05 at 06:22 PM

Subtle reverberations - tea and spirits, the live dead - play with the subconscious. A flower, from opening to closing.

Posted by Philip F De Pinto on 05/01/05 at 11:52 AM

I guess patience must be a virtue for ghosts as well as the living, for I suspect the wraiths will have been waiting a long time for her arrival. Beautifully rendered, this tea, from the surface to the dreg.

Posted by Ashok Sharda on 05/01/05 at 01:00 PM

'The dead carry her to bed, tuck her in, and wait patiently for their friend to join them.' Yes, she carries these association to carry her to bed and wait patiently in her patient wait. How can associations so deep and on an emotional plane ever die. They are as ALIVE as alive.

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