Tasseomancy, My Grandmother And The Old Irish Art Of Reading Tea Leaves

What did she see in tea leaves
that resembled seaweed on a rocky Connemara beach?
Was she just teasing with made up associations
to shapes remaining in the cup,
feigning an ability to predict out of dregs.

Once, in the kitchen of a house far from Ireland
she read her daughter’s tea.
Leaves, piled up against the handle side,
suggested the subject caused her own unhappiness.
But then a thin, slanted stalk contradicted.
Had she expected a mysterious stranger?

What might my grandma have divined
from the shapes and squiggles of leaf designs?
In the remote center of the bowl,
could she see me coming into being
with some future interest in the customs
of her abandoned homeland?
Did she know I would someday
crouch below the capstone of a dolmen
and weep like a keener for the merciless beauty
of the stone-lined farm lane
down which she gave a heartsick backward stare
as she made her way, clutching the meager passage fare,
to the immigrant ship in the bay?