Eiko, a young woman my own age from my English conversation class
offered to make me tea, in the prescribed formal way,
a skill prized among brides-to-be and samurai warriors alike.
Eiko would practice for me before offering the tea ceremony to a young man and his parents
to show herself as truly cultured, truly Japanese.
Her classmates spoke to me about the decorum and dignity required of me
As this was no small matter.
I would take the cup from her, handling it in just such a way,
Lifting to my mouth with two hands under the cup,
in a culture with stylized ways of making tea, arranging flowers in a vase, wielding swords and of acknowledging guilt.
I thought that perhaps perhaps my questions about her culture was what led to me being honored in this way.

In the teahouse, in a little bamboo forest in a corner of a Zen temple garden,
she was in a flower-pattern kimono, kneeling, her hands demurely in her lap,
saying nothing for a long while
as I sat in no small discomfort,
trying to sit as she and samurai warriors sat.
As she quietly prepared the cups, the bowl, the tea leaves and the bamboo whisk,
in a barely audible rattle, under the faint clattering of bamboo branches in a breeze,
the wind in the dry leaves whispering
like water being poured and her whisk in the tea bowl
was what I remembered.

My mind wandered
upon hearing a bamboo flute elsewhere in the temple
a breathy wheeze
like Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday mister president
as Eiko made me tea,
Perhaps wondering what my half smile was about.