Sunday 30 October 2022

The Txapela



Today I awake to sunlight
filtering through an attic window
from a Basque sky
and don a summer dress
though it is late Autumn
and cross a cobbled street
to a cafe bar
where I order black tea
and cross  my fingers
that it will not be Earl Grey
and will come with milk aparte 
and hopefully cold
and that the mermelada will
be derived from oranges
and that the man wearing 
the black beret
its rim pulled forward
finger thinned to a peak
a txapela in Basque
pronounced chapela
will grace this terrace
with gravitas
to sip his cafe solo
and to remind me 
of the sanctity
of old ways
and send me scuttling
homeward
to retrieve my few
focal as Gaelic
before those "thirty-one 
words for seaweed
whiten on the foreshore"

Copyright 2022 Cathy leonard All rights reserved
See Aidan Mathews poem The Death Of Irish

1 comment:

  1. Exotic inspiration!! Love it! And I couldn't get proper green tea in Kenmare, even in the hotel, but Helen's Bar had delicious organic green tea, and rhubarb pie!!

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