Poetry: Japanese Inspired Poetry

Meinohama Station

The stop between changing lines,
where the train escapes the subway
and comes to rest in the twilight,

I always wait here for the train home.
To the north, boats are mooring
and the harbor becomes calm.

On the other side, the city is still alive:
few cars sliding through, bicycles, but mostly
people walking. That is how it is.

Here, tracks reflect the sinking sun:
an overripe peach, falling from a blue tree,
juice beginning to color the night.

The rails are burning. A Ferris-Wheel gyres.
Like a child finally growing up,
who didn’t realize what he would leave behind,

like a captain who has a voyage to make
and a family at home without him,
I want to stay, but I have to go.

I see the sea beside this way, so close
I could touch it. But the train comes too soon.

I am caught between precious things.

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A Japanese October 

A road home, this October,

this one evening, one girl trapezes

the sidewalk across the street

wandering through

the damp leftover rain,

specked with yellow leaves,

and a scent of lavender

knit into the wind.

Hearing her footsteps, I notice

the woolen tam she wears,

cranberry red,

with a pumpkin-coloured shawl

covering her shoulders.

A pretty girl even at a distance.

And closer, a girl I knew

once at camp as a child, a regret

forgotten because I couldn’t find

the words to talk with her

and I might as well be in Japan

again, for how silent I am

like cold clouds caught on a mountain

beside a road where I lived and strolled

beside a different girl while she walked

her bike home beside us.

I hadn’t yet learned how to say

the word “beautiful.”

Back then, words stuck

in the sounds of spokes

and the scuff of shoes.

There were warm words hiding

between her broken English

and her tongue. I only listened

and stepped over words like puddles.

There were wet red leaves like hearts

falling there that October as here,

noticing only afterwards

the glowing words beneath a lamp

waiting for me like an old friend,

because I was watching her colors

float past on a line of light,

my mouth tight, my feet heavy,

my hands wrapped up

in the silence of pockets.

--------

Peach Tree Sky

“I buy a peach at the fruit store.”

“I eat a peach, therefore I am happy.”

I practiced these simple sentences,

trying to learn the Japanese structure.

But some things are easier seen than spoken.

Coming home on a foreign subway train,

we emerged from the ground

like earthworms after rain

under the departing clouds.

To the south, beyond the rice fields,

webbed strands of mist clung to the mountains:

children crying to their fathers

at the end of one more day.

A stranger beside me was crying too,

though I knew neither language nor custom to comfort him.

I looked away into the west to find a sunset:

a peach tree sky I wished he could see.

How delicious it would be for us

to notice gray clouds shaped into thin branches,

and the sun descending like the day’s fruit.

Who knew? This peach cannot be bought,

but it can be found in unexpected places.

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My experience in Japan had a profound experience on me. It was fall of '07 when I went there, a high-school graduate, but not yet a mature adult. I definitely grew up a lot there and I would gladly go back. 

The first poem here talks about a station that I stopped at every day to and from the school I went to there. As the poem states, it was the stop between lines and so I had lots of time there to look around and wait.

The second poem shares both an experience in Japan and one from last October where I saw a girl who I had once known in Minnesota at my Japanese immersion camp. I'm convinced it was her, but, in the end, did nothing about it and never saw her again.

The final poem is another experience on the light-rail in Japan as well as an insight into the struggle to communicate.

Enjoy!