2010:365:107 Tea time

A quick look at a pair of sugar tongs will suffice for today while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil.  Not that I'll be using the tongs or the sugar.  I don't normally take sugar (or milk) in tea or coffee but if it comes that way then that's okay too.  The sweet milky tea was something we enjoyed in Kajiado where it provided the energy we needed to work on the building site.  

So why a pair of sugar tongs - and why do we label some items as "a pair" when clearly it is one piece of metal?  I digress.

The 365Project throws up all sorts of interesting challenges and one of the folk I've been getting to know is a school teacher.  Her subject is English and her classes are studying poetry just now.  She set us a HOMEWORK!!  Yes, a homework over the weekend.

Her students have been reading the poetry of William Carlos Williams who wrote in free verse and about whom I knew nothing before yesterday.  Anyhow, always ready to try something new I accepted the assignment.

We were asked to find an object, an ordinary, everyday object.  Photograph it and then write a poem in the WCW style.  

Having just cleaned these wee tongs and filled the sugar bowl it struck me that they'd make a good picture.  So out I went to the wheelie bin where a number of the outside photographs are staged and set up the blue chopping board with the sugar and tongs.  Bright sunshine made it perfect.  For a change I took only about twenty shots and the one above was one of the last.  The sun reflecting off the tongs just happened and pleased me a lot.

The poem:

The Sugar Tongs     

Twisted
not contorted
two shining limbs.
Crafted
sterling silver
catch sun's bright ray.
Grasping
talon ended
clawing, holding.
Poised
ready, waiting,
coffee for me.

So that's it for now.  There are lots of things to do before the day's work is finished!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,

rolling as a mighty ocean in its fulness over me!

Underneath me, all around me, is the current of his love:

leading onward, leading homeward, to that glorious rest above.

Church Hymnal number 105

by Samuel T Francis