Watching Bon Odori from a Vantage Pointwith My Three Children
It was from a slope you earned by clinging.
The sidewalk was a crowd watching a street dance
of peasants hoeing rows of white radish
below strings of rice paper lanterns.
The drumbeat grew constant as surf
after days of ocean; it became a heartbeat.
The footwork of the drummer, the way each swing
had meaning and was sure
reminded me of my father just before retiring.
Drunk on payday night, he would sing on our front porch
a Japanese song that meant nothing to me
surrounded by a small town, sagebrush
and hills that stayed out of the way of a creek.
Clapping hands between each pause
of thumping foot, father wove 130 pounds of rhythm
with biceps I always admired. That’s what swinging
a pick or sledge hammer could do. Thirteen years old.
I would come up behind the ritual of his dance,
wrap suntanned arms around his chest, capturing
darker arms, and lift in a half-circle
to carry him back inside, out of the light
that took the shape of our front door
fallen down. Once inside he would want to do some judo,
telling me the story I had heard
longer than anyone in the family.
Not the oldest son, at 16 he had left their farm
in Nagano, gone to Tokyo, a descendent of samurai,
and had been thrown out of a club
that taught lessons in self-defense.
Right into the street, he would brag, just like this
as I held his still-strong grip and pulled him
up off the floor where I had tackled him,
not knowing judo. When you fall, he said,
before you land, hit the floor harder first
with your hand and arm; it won’t hurt.
Because It Is Close and My Mother Is 72
From our booth my mother watches a Chinese busboy
who looks older than she is, and can’t use good English.
He talks to those who don’t understand
with smiles and nods. Wearing a circle
of white cardboard for a hat with no top,
he displays one gold and three
missing teeth. His back bends over a tray of cups
like the top branch in a tree full of starlings.
He gestures to a waitress, he’s doing his job.
I recall my father telling me about ten cents
a day in 1910, working for the Great Northern.
The old man wipes at the floor next to us,
using an overflow of water and effort.
My mother looks away at the wall; he finishes,
dragging a darkened mop over deep red
and tan blocks of tile. One mopstring lags,
trailing evaporation that follows him
through swinging metal doors.
Our food on a tray passes the other way.
Splashes mark the wall near where he worked.
Clearing her throat my mother would rather
he get up earlier, mop before we come. She bunches
her face in a mask and adds, the food
is ten times better at Hong Kong
downtown; more high tone. Serving her, I nod.
I can feel the napkin ball under the knuckles
of her richly veined fist, a crumpled white blossom.
Shrike on Dead Tree
—after a painting by Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645)
Steadfastly
up the
single
brush
stroke
of its
trunk
a worm
crawls
toward
a butcher
bird
perched
on
an upper
barren
branch.
Ōhashi in a Shower
—after a painting by Hiroshige Ando (1797–1858)
Beyond the river
a grey wood is seen dimly.
Like black string
the rain falls
long
straight
slanting.
On a wooden bridge
six figures
divide
in a scurry
for shelter.
Droplets
pucker the indigo
water, smack
the planks
of the bridge
and a forgotten
raft about to float
downstream.
Painting of a HermitageShūbun, Fifteenth Century
A teahouse fits a bamboo grove by a lake.
In an open window a man
stops reading, studies a tree
twisting like tributaries to a river.
The pine drops dry needles,
green cones, over the edge of a cliff.
Somewhere out of the painting,
seedlings rise from earth
like men shrugging their shoulders.
Nisei: Second-Generation Japanese American
They grow over the Yangtze, the plum rains
grow over water that drops
gently to the wideness of the East China Sea.
Farmers in Kyushu are caught by the floating clouds,
caught square in the middle of their fields,
squinting