Old Poems

Inside the box

Many ways to solve a problem, 
I tell my daughter, relentlessly,

think outside the box, glibly, 

I advise, ignoring as-we-do

that I had my own nagging problem

I didn’t know how solve, 

and against all my advice,

I put my own problem

          in a box 

that I scaled to precise dimensions 

in my mind, though quite unlike

the light, luminous washi boxes she folds 

& she folds with her purposeful hands,

yet mine like hers is also portable 

so that I can lift it out of my mind,

gingerly, and when the moment is right,

place it in front of me, opening it 

to see if its contents still burns

like the embers once transported

in those handcrafted cases of Edo

that I saw in a dusty museum last year, 

and wondered why I was looking at them.

Last Haiku of Autumn

     so now you can see

the gingko tree who beckons

          is only a tree.

 Aesthetics of a Convergent World 

Smacks of beni or hong 紅 (crimson)

Sumi 墨lampblack, lacquer, too

Wagashi｜和菓子

煎饼｜jianbing

万葉集 (A Collection of Myriad Leaves, 759)

+ Leaves of Grass (草の葉, 1855) 

Lovely tapered fingers of ukiyo-e

Sinuous hands proving hard work

Crumpled wabi-sabi jeans of indigo

Reverberating bowl versus pulsing trap

Crinkle of second-hand Shinjuku-Colorado cowboy boots

Wood & washi & glass & silver, copper, cotton

A rustic shelter. Walden, Hōjōki.

If you need me to spell it out.

Mono no aware of all the universe.

​Murasaki, that’s enough of an ode to you.