Five Tastes Marry on Mott Street                                                                          

Salty. It’s raining, and hours too late.

But neither of us can sleep. So a red door

opens, and up the few dozen beeline

steps you are cooking for me

as if the day was just half-done.

Sour. Once I’m in, shaking off the wet

like a dog out of a peat fen, nothing

is what it appears. Kitchen steam

might be autumn dragon’s exhale

pushing the room to twice its size.

Mantis babies alighting on the table

turn out to be scallion wedges flying

from your blade. I, too, am made into

something else I do not recognize,

but accept as part of the spell.

Spicy. You are not conjuring a feast

for two, but sacrament for

all our line as well. A whole fish

seared on the gas fire, a whole

capon turned side over side

every ten minutes in water

not quite boiling. Shiny bowls

pile high with burdock, lotus,

taro, peony and glistening shoots

unwound in every direction.

Bitter. I know you know this food

is medicine, you say. But I did not

know till tonight how Five Tastes marry

to cool the red-hot mind.

Sweet. Greet me in the long ruddy hall/

my fingers slip like rain into yours/

what else need pass between friends

in this cramped palace,

this vast remembrance

in the coiling tides of Chinatown?

Wiser one, I still hear you say

we are safe as pearls cast onto the moon,

dressed in Five Tastes glory for no

perfection but our own.

rabbitandrose.com, literary blog curated by Kim Shuck,
San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita, issue 3, 2017