Savouring Organic Red Lantern Tea at The Reaching Out Teahouse in Vietnam.

Photo by the Author

To taste the bittersweet golden infusion

of wooden aged tea.

In silence, we sit.

The senses focus on the taste.

Savoured — it lingers

and soaks into the sponge membrane.

You hear approaching murmur of the mopeds,

voices chatter:

clatters and disperses.

You hear the sound of cutlery: cling, clang, and the flapping of wooden slippers on the stone floor.

The pain has subsided: diffused into the ether.

The mind rests on an endless plateau.

…lost — but at ease — as if to sleep — but lucid and wide awake.

The mellow earthy bitterness lingers on the tongue.

Clean and fresh — it soothes.

It tastes. You feel the tongue’s texture for the first time — it’s weight against the roof of the mouth.

We breathe in the warm sweet acetic scent, tempered with a warm, wet earthiness.

In the garden, the sunlight shapes the vista.

It defines the forms, those reflecting the sunlight and those that absorb it.

All is still.

The mellow tannin prevails, the feeling distilled.

We, for the longest of time, remain silent.

Smack the tongue to feel that it still resides in our mouths.

It weighs heavy.

The spikes that was stabbing my brain has subsided.

It is slowly dissolving in the taste of this soothing brew.