Soy Sauce

Standing on a stepladder

up under hot ceiling

tacking on wire net for plaster,

a day's work helping Bruce and Holly on their house,

I catch a sour salt smell and come back

down the ladder.

"Deer lick it nights" she says,

and shows me the frame of the window she's planing,

clear redwood, but dark, with a smell.

"Scored a broken-up, two-thousand-gallon redwood

soy sauce tank from a company went out of business

down near San Jose."

Out in the yard the staves are stacked:

I lean over, sniff them, ah! it's like Shinshu miso,

the darker saltier miso paste of the Nagano

uplands, central main island, Japan--

it's like Shinshu pickles!

I see in mind my friend Shimizu Yasushi and me,

one October years ago, trudging through days of snow

crossing the Japan Alps and descending

the last night, to a farmhouse,

taking a late hot bath in the dark--and eating

a bowl of chill miso radish pickles,

nothing ever so good!

Back here, hot summer sunshine dusty yard,

hammer in hand.

But I know how it tastes

to lick those window frames

in the dark,

the deer.