At Plumb’s

by Joseph Vitter

At Plumb’s Diner
the only tea drinker is a pretty
middle-aged woman
who believes in the uses of silence,

and the ritual of tea. She’s stacked, smart,
has that sexy tea-drinker’s grin.
I want to get next to her, talk
about the tea, tell her it’s
"Civilized in the way
poetry is civilized!"—see her
little smile—"Oh, bullshit!" it says—
ask her about the tea;
"Darjeeling?"
"Earl Gray."
Such marvelous words.

I know her.
She takes tea alone at Plumb’s
mid-mornings, early in the week.

When I visualize her
I see what I have shown here,
what I have never seen—the teacup
in her pale hands,
her slow breathing,

elbows set and graceful wrists involved
in the tasks of tea. I think that,
in those moments, she is given to the tea,
the little cup, the saucer, the heat
of the tea—there is no end or
beginning, I believe, to the moment
of tea; she has the lips for it, parted
as if for the kiss, and she knows

what to do with her eyes, which
engage, as if they are her lips and tongue,
with the meaningful tasks
of the tea.

Joseph Vitter says he is "temporarily to permanently on leave" from the "vicissitudes of modern living," in a fishing cabin somewhere in the Green Mountains of Vermont, with his Maine Coon Cat, Prowler, and his "octogenarian mutt-dog," Griz. This is his first published poem.