A Pot of Tea
__A pot of tea
Stirs the mind this winter morning.
__A pot of tea
Shared with you is felicity.
The mug, steam, and liquor warming
Our two souls—there’s love in brewing
__A pot of tea.
The Heliades
The mourning sisters call to Clymene,
Distressed at fell reward of their distress;
As mother’s desperate love inflicts injury,
Bleeding bark buries their self-bruised breasts
And stifles cries of grief with no redress
From love; so suffer the Heliades,
Whose amber tears course from swaying poplar trees.
Poet’s Note: In The Metamorphoses, Book II, Phaëthon is a boy who hubristically attempts to drive his divine father’s sun chariot. Unable to control the fiery cart and keep his course, Phaëthon nearly incinerates the earth, until Jove intervenes by striking him down. Phaëthon’s sisters, the Heliades, mourn their brother’s death for months, flagellating themselves in grief until they begin transforming into trees. Their mother, Clymene, tears at the bark forming around her daughters to try to save them, only to cause more serious injury. Suffering the wounds of their mother’s desperate love, the Heliades’s final cry is for mercy.
Samuel Gregg lives in Ephrata, Washington, where he teaches Theology, Choir, and Great Works at a classical Christian school.
