Poetry by Willie Smith
The spout of the Teapot
pours into the black hole
at the center of the Galaxy, I
think, pouring boiling over the bag in
the bottom of the cup. Thirty thousand
years back I peer into the invisible,
when I stare to the right of Al Nasl,
the star forming the spout,
meaning “the point,”
Al Nasl doubling as the tip of
the arrow in the larger
Sagittarius figure that contains the Teapot.
Here I breathe – waiting for the tea to steep,
scent of ginger, pepper, mint, filling the kitchen,
thirty thousand lightyears from a
singularity no one begins to grasp.
By the time I take out and toss the bag in the trash,
preparing gingerly scalding tea to sip, the
zodiac has spiraled into the
squeezed-from-a-teat Milky Way;
confusing the known with the make-believe,
soothing thought with traces of spice.
Vita Brevis Press. 