Friday the postman delivered tiny orange sundrops
from my mother’s Kalamansi tree somewhere in Florida
where hurricanes wander by (but not TOO often!)
Saturday I discovered, deep in a cabinet
a tin of Kaffir Lime Leaves from Thailand
but really from a market in Montreal
where the aisles are like canyons
of tins and exotic sundries.
Today I contemplated persimmons in a bowl,
brilliant orange globes flattened like the earth
but only one may have been tilted at 23 and a half degrees.
With my eyes closed, and sometimes with them open
I see glassine masks on the faces of actors
performing opera for some ancient Chinese Emperor;
Tiny dark masks filled with drops of orange sun.
I see bronze statues of Thai dancers with fans and spiked brass hats,
Opaline domes of cream-white and fragrant kaffir in their open palms.
I see rough-cut squares, wabi-sabi wafts of delicate persimmon;
imperfect, and already passing through brief lives
waiting to entangle my senses and become
only thoughts of ingredients that might or might not be.