The Reader of Tea-Cups

A friend of my mother's read tea cups And when I came home from school we would ante up She would be in the lounge room awaiting us We would drink our tea and go in without fuss So we would sit there with up turned cup on our plate And read what our future from the cup she would make My mother said the tea cup was an instrument And that you would see what the Lord would have sent This lady had learnt her skill during the time after the Great War When death had called far too often that our families saw So the Spiritual Church sanctified these people whose life had been mired During the Great War when their soldier's death had transpired She was the one who told of my spirit guide An older man in a suit who stood with pride The thing the I could never work out How she knew some things that I did not let out © Paul Warren Poetry