Jasmine Tea

When water touched their sleeping buds the jasmine flowers opened as pinyin then floated to the surface the way thoughts become a poem and blossom into words. My father would put his ear to the lip and listen to what the blossoms spoke as they renewed their lives in warm spring rain. He would offer me a sip of April, though April was never as perfumed as the music I am certain he heard when he closed his eyes, inhaled the fragrance rising in tendrils of curling steam steeped in legend and a rice grained bowl.