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 to see who it is
standing there on the dirt bank, the mud
in the soft rain, soft as the leading edge of a cloud.
I write this on a day that has twisted away
from doubt. Happy to be here
still I have a place on that grey continent,
far home of my grandfathers,
those figures I never saw except in pictures.
Photographs yellow and brown as old newsprint,
smudges of thought, of fingers and skin.
Time to realize the importance of rain.
Rain on the ground,
and rain still falling.
II / from Crossing the Phantom River 1978
Allowance
I am ten.
My mother sits in a black
rocking chair in the parlor
and tells stories of a country school
surrounded by ricefields
and no roads.
I stand in the kerosene light
