In the Tea House

Fig 5.  "Fuji-View Tea House on the Takiado at Yoshida."  1830

So many times, I've watched it from afar,

It's snow crowned peak-expanding base.
Its view is undiminished in the face
of tender gieshas, elders, or the poor.
I curse the distance I've been forced to stay
so far from it in rooms of common clay.

I am the toast of all I draw or do--
a well-trained monkey that performs and plays.
They know my name, but not each place I stay,
each name I take, each debt that I accrue,
sends me much farther from my place of birth,
and even now I wonder at my worth.

I've trained my hands to trace in shadowed lines,
and all the textures reach from what I see.
There's nothing I can't sketch or bring to be.
My brush obeys each hand. And what I find
in everything I draw is but the start
of what will someday be my greater art.

I have no place here in this house of tea.
These geisha talk of fashion and of gold.
The travelers in the corner are too old.
The poor cook is the only one I see.
He knows his place and does not question life,
lulled by the rhythmic chopping of his knife.

Beneath the Wave

Fig 4.  Beneath the Wave off Kanagawa. 1830

"The lotus flower has opened, has opened, has opened.

Even as I thought I has opened--lo!
Yattokosa--It has closed again."--Traditional Geisha Song

There are some stories sailors never tell
of waves so tall they swallow boats and all,
in far, cold waters.  They can form a wall,
and bloom like flowers straight from some great hell.

The snow-capped top stays stationary here,
while hand on hand on hand curls up to grab.
Those fools sail out in boats so long and drab
they could be coffins formed by Fuji's tears.

I do not weep for sailors or their wives
for in the distance, I can sense a wave.
It will en-wrap me soon.  I feel it crave
to take me with it, somewhere from this life.

I know not when it comes, that last
blur forming at the edge of time.  It waits
and opens to ensnare me with its hate.
It forms a fist to break me in its grasp.