Our Collaborative Poem

Tea from Pinglin, Taiwan

Here is our Collaborative Poem.  Any suggestions for a title?  This is comprised of the first lines of the poems you submitted on "Poem in Your Pocket Day."  Thank you!  I made a few grammar changes and added a few transition words, but that's it.  Enjoy!

I thought that I would never see a poem as lovely as a tree
But then once upon a cool path I did tread... the ferns, they spoke to me
The lotus flower opened and closed every day in a ritual of renewal

The grip that swung the ax in Illinois
Was on the pen that set a people free
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom

We, who with songs beguile your pilgrimage and swear that beauty lives though lilies die
Will not play at tug o' war but rather play at hug o' war
We give up sighing for what might have been; Yesterday's gone, never more to be seen

We had a kettle: we let it leak
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not
The moon's the North Wind's Cookie, he bites it day by day

But anything can happen, child, anything can be
If you think that you'll find true understanding
There is this tea I have sometimes

Grow old along with me
And the only way is
To drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves