Category: Japan Poems

TIME TRAVEL #1

Westward to Japan

We fly into tomorrow

Before today ends.

JAPANESE TODDLER

Petite and sad-eyed,

When gifted with a toy car

She glows with wonder.

JAPANESE FATHER

The headphones he fits

To his daughter’s tiny head

Are like a blessing.

FALL REUNION

Three old Japanese

Comrades smile for our camera

At the Buddhist shrine.

GINGKO BILOBA

Maidenhair fossil

Tree, you are said to be the

Cure for all life’s ills.

jAPAN CITIES

Swarming urban hives,

Every bus a cattle car,

Each crossing, Times Square.

FORECAST

Japan, exemplum

Of the word “congestion”:

Our planet’s future.

THE PHILOSOPHERS’ WALK

Lined with cherry trees

By a flowing waterway,

A respite from crowdS.

A FAR CALLING

From the Zushi train

We see a glimpse of Fuji,

Clear but far away.

THE TRAIN TO TAKAYAMA

Along a river

Cut into volcanic rock

The night falls early.

TAKAYAMA TO NAGOYA

Bullet trains cut straight

Through and between mountainsides

Gowned in fall colors.

MEMENTO MORI

At Hase temple

Kites circle over our heads.

Death is never far.

AT THE ZOO

With unhopeful eyes

The elephant looks at me

And I feel ashamed.

APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING

Fragrant lychee fruit,

Your delicious white sweetness

Hides in your rough rind.

THE HAKONE YAJIKITA

Painted charlatan,

You gull foreign visitors.

You are no ryokan.

TAKAYAMA MARKET

Your vegetables

Astonish foreign viewers:

So big, so perfect!

RESTING PLACE

Towering cedars

Shelter a benign spirit:

Koyasan’s founder.

LITTLE TREES

Gracious persimmons,

Your golden globes light our way

And your fruit hangs low.

AUTUMN SPLENDOR

Delicate fingered

Fiery red gold maples:

Fall epiphony.

ANOMALY

Sea of sand and stone

At the Silver Pavilion

A respite from crowds.

PETITION

Gnarly limbed old pine,

Symbol of longevity,

Teach us how to age.

TIME TRAVEL #2

As I’ve longed to do,

We fly back in time, but we

Don’t fly far enough.

ODYSSEY

I have returned to Japan after thirty years

Since our youngest daughter made her way

To complete in Osaka her BU college degree.

Her father was still jogging every day.

Life and the rice fields were still green.

On this fall visit to Japan I plead

For some relief from grief.  I ask

The gracious Buddha for heart’s ease.

And as the strenuous swift days pass

Through alien and exotic scenes,

I sense a slowly growing distance

Between my sweet lost loves and me,

A moat of separation from the past.

Though no less dear their features be,

I stand outside the looking glass

Between what is and what can never be,

Between acceptance and a world of pain,

And lightening my dark misery

I feel a welcome sense of peace.

The rice stalks now are drying in the fields.