At the Base of Your Knee

Here at the base of your knee
the world is towering with room
for many shadows.

The floor gives enough
to allow me security,
but not enough to make me wonder for our home.

Our home—
the people we were and are under
the hazy yellow light
of long afternoons with my mother.
Yellow and smoother with a heat
that grows until the only escape
is my drooping head on your knee.

But I wake and you are old and I am
somehow still young
and you feel a curse of what comes next—
A tower above me.

I must stand and leave you on the floor and dream more.

A tower above me and you feel
a curse of what comes next.
Somehow still young, but I wake
and you are old and I am.

Is my drooping head on your knee that grows
until the only escape—
yellow and smoother
with the heat
of long afternoons with my mother.
The hazy yellow light,
the people we were and are,
under our home.

But not enough to make me
wonder for our home, to allow me security.
The floor gives enough.

For many
shadows, the world is towering
here at the base of your knee.

How to Make Sake

How to Make Sake the Traditional Way
Step 01: Polish Rice
​​Step 02: Wash and Soak Rice
Step 03: Steam Rice
Step 04: Make Koji Rice
Step 05: Make Shubo
Step 06: Fermentation
Step 07: Press Fermented Rice
Step 08: Remove sediment
Step 09: Filter alcohol further
Step 10: Heat Sake
Step 11: Store and wait for shipment
Step 12: Pack Japanese Sake in a bottle

How to Make Sake at Home in 5 Easy Steps
Step 1: Preparing your Sake Rice
Fish are in the same sea but swallow
one another whole. Maybe a school of fish or a harem of heron
is a better metaphor. Like rice grains scrubbed into oblivion
and hollered into compliance until their matter descends into
a fermentation pulverization and it comes out sweet
and new. Some call that poison.
Same for grapes and grape wine. Same oblivion.
Step 2: Moto
_____But if the vine breaks
or the patty floods with grime and gook, if a few grapes
survive, a mangle of grains are picked, is that generation a victory?
Step 3: Miromi mash
_____Your life is not your own. My body flops frail
and aching in the changing weather. Who have I failed? Am I
the sad grape the line accounts for? The lame pigeon
the others scoff at but leave some crumbs for. A clacking
jaw inept for the place with patties flood.
Step 4: Yodan
_____A boy who died at war is only a boy and the war, communal
suicide. A forest mowed down,
_____A library meeting a match,
______A line about to drown. Who really cares? Who gives a shit if one boy stumbles?
_____At the worst, he is a single grain of rice so ripe and pregnant with the sun’s
burn and the earth’s hollow that I am plucked
and smashed and brought to my knees
to make a juice so sweet with my brethren that the town sees god.
Step 5: Secondary, Clarifying, Maturing