heavens tea - portland school of tea arts

All poetry by Paul Rosenberg. Copyright 2007. Poems cannot be reproduced without permission from the author.

LET TEA

Let Tea

Let tea drink you,

Let tea experience you

Let tea taste you, savor you, ponder you

Sit in tea’s belly, laughing softly

Soak into tea’s leaves and veins

Let your nature meet tea’s nature

Tea will breathe you and sigh,

And you will become something else.

CHA DAO

Earth loving root

Root loving tree

Tree becoming tea

Tea be-loving me.

Poem 2

Tea

Whisper in my ear

Leaf

Tell me your thoughts

Hidden things stir your viens,

on the tree in the still of night.

Fragrant watery breeze blowing from nearby stream

Teasing you with fingers that never touch.

But that is the language of nature

Touching without limbs

Seeing without eyes

Breathing without moving

Singing without a song

Secrets told in invisible languages.

Leaf to leaf

Harmonies sung without words.

Pulse quickens

As lush days turn into fecund nights

To those without ears, the sound

Is impossibly beautiful.

Finally you are picked,

Leafing aspirations

To join your world to the human one,

For a bowl of tea.

.

Old Tea

Sink into the heart of nature

Drink until you become

Part of that which flows through all living things

Become soul water

A tiny mountain stream feeding life.

Puerh

Puerh lives in roots, and trunk and leaves

Puerh talks with other plants

Puerh soaks up minerals, sun, rain, time.

Puerh is fed by patience,

Nature, time, care, intention.

These things go into a cakes soul,

And in gratitude the cake gives back to man

The essence of these same qualities.

Spring Sencha

Fragrant leaf, sitting in a pot.

Patiently waiting for water.

Water, leaf, human hands,

A luminous ocean of green is born.

A field of fresh spring wild grasses

Washes over the senses

Giving memories of something

that never happened.

Tea in wonderland.

Drink a drop of nature,

Swooning in a bowl

Drops igniting dancers

Deep within the soul.

Take a sip of leaf

Swirling in the wind,

Leaves like magic carpets

Causing us to spin.

Pour down this magic potion

Lick up every drop

Turning us to water

Flowing never stop.

BOWL

Resting inside my bowl

I ponder simple things,

The breath, the color of clay in the sunlight,

A moth looking for life in all the wrong places.

Resting inside my bowl

Silence is continually born from within all my chaos.

How can this be,

Quiet from a riot.

Resting inside my bowl

Tea washing over me,

I should crawl out

Before I get wrinkled.

But I think I’ll wait till

the rest of the world dives in.

Matcha

One day I was matcha

Thick green tea in a heavy bowl.

even this clay bowl can not contain my vitality

The quickness of my soul cannot be contained by matter.

I am a green storm, whirling with ecstatic joy.

Leaping over clay and lip

Towards the inner experience of a human being.

I am swirling vitality waiting to barge down doors

Opening inner channels, some blocked by pain,

Some blocked by memories,

Some blocked by thoughts of things that never happened.

ancient tea leaf

I was born in mineral earth,

Raised by root and trunk,

And leafed into the wind.

Picked by true hands

Ground in stone and air

Sifted into a caddy.

Waiting for you,

waiting for me.

Drunking Tea

Drunking tea

until its me,

how can I ever stop.

Drunking tea

until I pee,

oh god I thought I’d drop.

Drunking tea

until I see

everythings a prop.

Drinking tea

until I’m drunk,

I’m liquid ,get the mop.

Ancient Tea Forest

Slumbering nights inbdeep forest,

with dozing roots and snoring trunks.

Slow mineral secrets passed from earth to root

Chemical equations of earth /soul balancing each other out.

Gentle tides moving messages underground,

Murmurs of hope and aspiration

echoing off deep passageways.

A moment passes and so does another word

between night and day.

Earth loving root

Root loving tree

Tree becoming tea

Tea be-loving me.

Leaf

Trees giving birth to hundreds of generations of leaves

Each year new birth finally surrendered to the wind.

An endless cycle of mass birth and death

But not death of endings,

But death as transformation.

Leaves surrendered to cup.

Each passing leaf generation,

absorbing the accumulated wisdom of the tree.

New birth, from old growth

Each leaf containing both energies

Young vitality, the effervescence of youth

Combined with deep soul wisdom,

The essence of the nature

Circling around her core a 1000 times.

Drinking this,

How can a human not be changed.

4

listen to nature.

morning comes

Tea enters the room

and asks for a seat

drink with me, pray with me

lets get ecstatic together

and be released from our forms.

Tea saiz, I have lived in the forest for

Hundreds of years

And felt the flashing passage of human life

A spark, carried off in the cosmic wind.

There is so much I want to share with you

Nature is all ears, listening, responding, harmonious songs,

But man has only two and it is hard for him to hear outside himself.

Nature made me to talk to you

Sip me, sit in silence with me and I will tell you many secrets

Let me unfold for you the deeper rythums of life

Let me whisper in your heart about the peace that comes from surrender

Listening is the key to drinking tea,

And the key to so much more.

Drink me and and feel the love

Nature has for you.