In Chinatown they wash the tables with tea
as pale as night water—spilled
with a single dip of the wrist, still
steaming, from its metal pot—gleefully
affronting tourists who sit uneasily
at a round communal table half willing
but unable to let the space filling
their wide laps go. The tea spreads, a busy sea
eking toward the table’s edge. Some waiters
wait until chairs are scraped back to soak
it up with a napkin or two. Later,
in the kitchen, a cook just woken
up from a nap considers dizzy Fate
who keeps putting together people like hope.