How to blend tea. The British
working man in 1916 knew
what was important. Moustaches,
boots, women, scones, and tea.

All day in the tea warehouse,
with morning and afternoon
breaks for tea. The veins ran
cimarron with bucking leaves;

disembodied smiles, flecked
black and green for flavor,
floated against the rafters
like clouds. This was the war

effort and no shirking. Piles
of proud tea from one
foreign colony after another
stood two stories tall,

the glory of the British Empire
shoulder right for the fighting
man. The workers shoveled
tea into itself until their eyes

swirled like the leftover specks
at the bottom of a porcelain
cup, and their sinuses whistled
samurai clean to the bone.

The tea was shipped in little
tins to the Western Front.
All day the trenches sputtered
tea, and the cannons roared.

–James Doyle,
The Long View Just Keeps Treading Water (2012)

James Doyle is retired, 75 years old, and lives in Ft. Collins, Colorado. His publications include The Governor’s Office,The Sixth Day; The Silk at Her Throat, Einstein Considers a Sand Dune, and Bending Under the Yellow Police Tapes. James Doyle’s poems have appeared in numerous magazines. His poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s PBS radio show, The Writer’s Almanac, and on Poetry Daily. Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry has featured his work, and his poetry has appeared over a dozen times on Verse Daily. His poems have been reprinted in many anthologies, including Prentice Hall’s Literature: an Introduction to Critical Reading, used in universities across the country.