Bitter Tea

 Before you skip to the poem, there are some things to know.

It was written July 31, 1989, during a workshop on Creativity, held in northern Minnesota at a YMCA camp called Camp Northland. At the time I was in a support group called We Care, for people dealing with the myriad issues following losing a loving relationship from separation, divorce, and for a few, being widowed. By this time I had become a group facilitator, and been elected to the management board, Fellowship For Renewed Living, or FRL. While on the board I was mostly a Programs Chair, the head person planning and overseeing workshops, such as the one where this was written. They covered a variety of topics, like sexuality, looking at our childhoods, massage/touch, creativity, and more. All were about personal exploration, healing, and growth. Emphasis was a combination of bringing in professional presenters, and breaking into small groups to look at ourselves and our feelings, the ones we'd all been thoroughly trained to stuff away. Through the United Way, our organization was assisted by the St. Paul YMCA. Primarily that meant we had a professional assistant, and one week a summer, a location to get away to and hold a week-long workshop at, Camp Northland. It is near the edge of the BWCA and abuts  sister Camp du Nord, along Lake Burntside, near Ely.

I've been cleaning and tossing, packing what should go north with us, recycling papers, going through seeming tons of old photos to save what still has some value, both for me and to pass down to younger generations. I might be halfway through the first purge of photos, which will need a second one once I know all that is there and decided how many shots of the same kids doing the same things on the same day are really needed to give them a sense of their history. So many are now red-on-red anyway. Most of the photos I shot of places and things have been duplicated by now with shots years later which are amazingly similar, except perhaps for weather, so I know my eye hasn't changed much. A few will need to be duplicated in e-files. 

Occasional surprises pop up.

This poem is one,  It was in the Creativity Workshop folder, one of several workshop folders hidden between albums, written, filed, and forgotten. It was a moment in time, an exercise to write without self-judgment, without censorship. It is a mood without documented reason, and you should know, a process whereby those things could be written down so they might be looked at for a moment where you could decide what they meant for you. Something in my brain back then said the writing process meant I didn't need to hang on to it any more.

Tea

Come, drink.
Know your cup is bitter tea
While others here sip honey.
For all the years
You’ve cultivated flowers,
Never swatting at the bees
When they buzzed near,
For all the honeycombs
Where you’ve scraped off the wax,
Now watch while others’ fingers
Dip the golden prize.
Your cup is bitter tea
And you will drink it
“Till it chokes you,
While others here sip honey.

A couple more things to remember. Things for me have gotten much better than that moment, whatever forgotten thing prompted it. And I've learned that the outward faces of others often do not reflect their inward truths. Mine was not the only cup of bitter tea that day. Or for that matter, any other day.