INFUSION
The teapot stood on the kitchen table, dressed in knitted cosy, steam playing at spout’s end...
The man, who knew he must be dying, for he had been left for dead on the floor by some particularly ruthless housebreakers, looked up at it from the linoleum. It’s the little things you should cherish, when you’re properly alive. Like the sight of the teapot’s infusion... Like a dirty spud in the vegetable basket... Like the very taste of existence, which is the air you breathe.
He’d never really stared for long at a teapot before. If he was not discovered soon, the tea would not be worth drinking. He had only just made it when the ruffians forced entry through the kitchen door ... for which he had vowed to get a new lock, as long as he could remember.
He should have fondled the curves of the Samovar, when he had the chance.
If he had but realised, life had been freedom from death. He was now imprisoned by unfulfilled and unfulfillable desires. Given half the chance, he would have given life the other half... Like making love to the inanimate as well as the animate... Like recycling a still-life, making it truly live.
As he dreamed of death, the blood in his skull cooled around the brain.
He reached a kind of sumptuous peace ... a peace that the housebreakers would never know, for they did time in eternity.
(published 'Peace & Freedom' 1988)
