AFTERNOON TEA
Memory is the mothership.
I wash and rinse the pots and pans,
remembering the scraggly tall
European refugees working
in the kitchen of the boarding school
I went to in the Fifties. I can’t
remember ever knowing their names
yet here they work, crusty aprons on
and giant silver trays glinting
as they walk toward the spreading tree
where we queue in the shade, hungry
as growing boys can be, and take
one gigantic slice of fresh baked bread
spread with strawberry jam. Ah,
that jam! Memory
is the mothership that lowers
its gangplank under the tree where
we sit hurriedly eating the first slice,
hoping for seconds.
- Andrew Burke
