The First Supper

The mountains will bare themselves and our hands will receive.

Image credit: New Art Encyclopedia

before winter silences

the humming forests

kings and commoners pray 

may there be enough.

like a steady tide 

rising above the trees

they swallow paths and

strip mountains of their green mane.

the icy ground shivers without its rustling coat

picked bare

of their roots, the sprouts, the seeds

scarcely a weed left

for lazy grasshoppers.

stolen by hungry mouths

the contraband are handled deftly

by milky hands 

gloved in red chilli flakes.

with the precision of gutting a man

the women carve and cleave the greens

treating their wounds with salt

soaking their treasures in scarlet brine

and stroking each leaf

till they fall asleep.

soon

a king’s banquet will grace

the lowly 상

filled with offerings 

from the mountains to the streams:

glazed cubes of potatoes, perilla leaves drowned

in soy with lustrous glass noodles

peppered by black fungi and sesame seeds.

red paints radishes, cabbages, chives

engulfing plates

and lingering on the tongue.

molten amber is sealed inside eggshells

it simmers and bides 

as each jewel fights to colour the rice

but the crisp white must erode

against the waves of red broth. 

the mountains will bare themselves

and our hands will receive;

as long as the mountains provide

our tables will be plenty.