JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI

(After the documentary, 2013)

In a subsurface ten-seat

Ginza shop the quest goes on,

its reverence for detail

essential Japanese.

No accident each piece is sized

to waiting mouths, or decades’

prenticeship required for egg cakes

to rise square or glistening green nori

to be rolled: a cosmic war

unfolds here -- marshalled forces beat

back chaos in the fish, white rice grains,

life. For what’s perfection but

pursuit of the phantasmic dream, that

shadow down the hall receding from

our grasp? And how is one to know when

it’s attained? The perfect oblong,

talisman of hope fulfilled,

floats past, derailed by

chance: remains

unmade.

From Joys of the Table: An Anthology of Culinary Verse (Richer Resources Publications, 2015)