For Bak-il, the Hundredth Day Celebration, of Imogen Conner-Lee
Late in the morning of your 93rd
Day, your mother handed you to me.
You found your purchase balanced on my belly
And, leaning sagely on my forearm, slobbered
A bubbly stream, but didn’t seem displeased.
Soon, though, your gaze by something (not a bird)
Outside my kitchen window had been seized.
You reached for it. We wondered what it was.
My trusty pal the cypress? Who can say?
Your mother and I spoke more of your Hundredth Day,
And let the mystery do what mystery does –
Allow us in good time to grow somehow
Grateful for it. And we’re all abuzz
With gratitude on this occasion: now
You’ve reached that Day! Steamed rice, sea mustard soup –
Offered to Samshin safeguarding your health;
Prayers for luck, longevity and wealth;
Some red bean rice cakes placed upon the stoop,
Back porch, the house’s sides – the compass points –
For happiness, good fortune. Can our group,
Though, satisfy the task this day anoints?
Rice cakes must get into 100 pairs
Of hands! So plates go out to neighbors, friends,
And come back bearing single threads with ends
That go unseen. Time was, there’d be no pairs
Of eyes that would have seen you but your parents’
Until this very day. 100 bears
Its maturation symbol with forbearance
In memory of risk now rendered small
By modern medicine. So prayers fade
From lips of folks who’ll fête their eighth decade
As their forebears did their seventh. (If at all
Sick come Hundredth Day, a child was stuck
In bed, the day’s hushed passage into nightfall
Sans celebration – it would bring bad luck.)
But after all, this grinding mortal worry
When the Hundredth dawned on a healthy girl or boy
Fueled all the more the ceremony’s joy!
That wine still pours today. And still the flurry
Of glutinous rice flours: steamed white fluffs
For cleanliness and freshness; sharp as curry,
The red bean powder rice cake that rebuffs
Ill tidings; pounded sticky cakes for patience.
Well, thought retains, today as then, it’s age-
old mystery – regardless of how sage
Or doltish we become. Intelligence:
Its mystery formed here as half a moon
(Rounding out the list of these confections
In orbit round the child), the curving rune
Of which it takes as symbol (or is taken) –
Songpyeon. For filling: soy beans, jujubes,
Or sesame seeds with honey, maybe cowpeas
Or chestnut paste. For shape: bulbous, wind-shaken
Half moons, arrayed on plates in, say, a scheme
Of off-white, lemon yellow, plum, carnation
Pink or – notably – deep rustic green.
For as you’ll know when grown and reading this,
Song means pine tree. Songpyeon takes its name
From a sheet of needles layered over flame
Beneath the cakes being steamed; the water’s hiss
Is permeated by the scent of pine.
You reached – you won’t remember? – towards the cypress
That waived outside my window in a fine
Gray wash of light… But half moons? – why? Time was,
Their shape was chosen for this ceremony
Because full moons, for all their sheen, can only
wane, while half moons can grow full. We buzz
With gratitude for fullness to be hewn
By you into the shape of what it does,
This mystery, thought, this reaching for the moon.
Seattle, May 2015
