If you get asked for a recipe to cook rice

To measure rice grains – per person

You can’t acquire this kind of cup for coin

ours was (bent and worn)

the pillar box-red plastic child’s cup,

abandoned finally, maybe with scorn

(maybe mine?)

To pick rice - (today)

is not required.

except to honour those who threshed the hand harvest in the sun,

on the frond-swept, stamped earth, the indentured ancestors

(maybe ours?).

To measure rice water – per pot.

This is not metric or imperial -

just a finger knuckle length above the rice line

(maybe my grandmother’s)

To cook rice – directions.

These are the instructions to build a way of life,

from failing at the first attempt,

under the scornful eye of your mother-in-law,

and by process of elimination

day by month by year, repeating pot – stove – smell – sound -

and lastly feel.

To eat rice – by serving …

… your time at the long table of illiterate deep history,

by sensing, from hunger to belonging,

the familial comfort of sustenance

At Auntie’s table:

fat, translucent and separate,

always a bit cool

(and abundant).

In Grannie’s kitchen:

on the dot of noon,

hot and small grained, in clumps, Chinese style

(and abundant).

At home:

at the workday’s conclusion, all of ours in shifts,

at mechanical speed,

opaque white and each seed steamed open each end to an arabesque,

subtle (and abundant).

These hand’s signatures,

repose archaic now.

Like the click of lacquered chopsticks,

placing bones in silken cradles

at the feast of cremation,

down generation to generation

the rice people

beat – heart – rhythm.

Like hand clap beating,

Hand clap

Hand clap

Hand clap

In the resonating groove,

In the propagating drive,

In the integrating love.