Japanese Restaurant Dream

She sees starchy white sushi boats

flying pastel coloured flags

idling through Nori marshes

down pungent ginger rivers

that cleave wasabi fields verdant

under a tempura battered sky

heavy with fumes of Sake clouds

that yield fragile Raku plates

which shatter on the soy-stained earth

into smooth round Feng shui pebbles

that are strewn by the circling eddies of green tea rituals

into Kanji-shaped avenues

down which the saucy Teriyaki woman

with her languid chopstick limbs

and umami drenched lips

and her printed kimono breath

is bringing a tear-warm miso pail

into a lemongrass and bamboo scented dawn

being roused by wafting cherry blossoms

that have drummed a tattoo

upon the sliding rice-paper door

beyond which the low-table of waking

is kneeling, in barefoot hunger

 

Anindita Gupta, India