Tea Leaves Told Me So

—Oh, don’t you also sense
how quietly, with a dash
of intellect, Asian tealeaves
perceptively intuit and tell—

with subtle taste and scent—
a furtive gist, long-withheld
secrets of distant lives
we may have once lived,

which some unsung genius
or spirit of this earth
folded far away
into Camellia sinensis,

named for Georg Kamel,
a Moravian pharmacist,
whose name itself
may descend from jamala—

to bear, to ripen—
or other allied roots
in Arabic or Turkish
for what becomes perfect,

whole, complete,
unfaultable—

So I wonder,
who was the sage
who understood
that deeper poetry,

and accounts of our lives,
are kept inside
those far-off,
detached camellia leaves?