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Daikon
by Erik JensenI lumber into the restaurant,
black sunglasses and Camel-smoke laced
frenzied hair, looking for some dark corner -
not that I'm shameful, just cautious.
When – twelve minutes and twenty-one seconds later -
you walk in with that grin, how can
I be -
be anything but glad?
The waiter had already written the usual, but
I stumped him with my daikon change of heart.
Bemused, he scribbles a correction,
wondering what the special occasion might be.
Pleasantries exchanged, I wander to my
mother, her yellow sunflowers walls and her hopes that no daughter of hers
(no matter how much she hated pink oven mitts)
would be here, waiting on
so definitive an answer.
It's been a clunky nine minutes when
a lush plate of green and vinegar rice reaches me -
and I focus on the miraculous transformation from bitter to sweet
while you tell me in rushed, hushed exasperation
about impossibilities and phases of the moon.
They're always against you.
Truth is, you honey me into
something sweet and smoothe, something I don't know.
Something I taste in this white crunch,
Something tragically short. 09/03/2009 Posted on 09/04/2009
Copyright © 2024 Erik Jensen
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