Jill McKeowen #9 Mum's Teapot

Mum’s Teapot

It served us mornings and afternoons,

its “Empire” design made in England

to last, the aluminium globe

bearing a pattern of sashes draped   

as if for a coronation, or,

as I used to imagine,

my mother’s wedding reception in

the black-and-white velvet fifties.

The spout, like an open-beaked bird,

sang to her first sunny kitchen

in the new pink fibro sixties,

when American-allied house design

gave us the breakfast bar, and there

we sat through the purple seventies

slurping milky sugared tea

while Mum wrapped our lunch for school.

In thirteen houses over fifty years,

this teapot brewed the Billy Tea

that we grew out of when moving away

to travel the share-house eighties,

and later, bringing our kids to visit,

we added new names to the pot— 

the Twinings lot, the herbals, chai—

and the century turned an age.

My sister decided a new pot was needed:

smooth silver, cylindrical lines,

and Mum quite likes the affluence,

goes along with the times—no choice,

death teaches you that—but still

she insists on Billy Tea, needs  

old points of reference

when everything has changed.

The old pot sits in my kitchen, sound

as the day it embarked, but empty,

the silent spout reaching up

in balance for the Bakelite handle

generous enough for the sturdiest hand,

the tannin-dark interior

so deep you need a light to see

the decades encrusted there.


Definitely in early draft stage, and may stay there; it feels superficial, but I've learned from it that the point of some pieces is simply to practice.