As I ask her to stay all night

                               she says

Where do you think this is going

I tell her I know exactly where this is going

I think she likes to be reassured

Carolers down the street.

He always went the other way.

Chimes of silent bells;
tongue taken out
or covered in felt.

And when people told him
to buy the ex-wife a fine wine
he went with wool socks instead.

Except the first time they made love
on a wintry day like this
snow falling as he came down.
There seemed to be music
coming from deep within
the winter clothes
of Christmas shoppers
and as they passed
he bid them Merry Christmas
and it was as though
they were somehow pleased
to hear it.

She said she hadn't been sleeping -
bad dreams: her Jack Russell
getting lost in the fields.
And it's almost harvest time.

I said, half jokingly - only half,
it's your maternal instinct
kicking in. She laughed.
I guess she's still that young.

i too would go
to japan before
the war in asia

short poems written and published
under my own auspice
haikus only at the end.

fall in love with shizumi
as a girl, before i knew her,
loving her til death.

ice-cream shop, run
an ice-cream shop
with her, and i

don't even like ice-cream
all that much

In her parent's attic we find
a drawing she once made.

Drawing of a child,
it shows the world
after it's done. Day
warm with sun,
on the skin of lovers;
rocks alive, as you or me.

It's all reminiscent
of an R.S. Thomas poem,
and I tell her so.

It will be the last thing I say
as the one I once thought I was.

She points at what
has escaped me
all along, and says:
"This is your heart.
I colored it, to my liking."

So, that's how it all began.

On this morning
bleak midwinter of '44
in Heart Mountain, Wyoming,
heartland of America,
Nyogen Senzaki Sensei
performed to his makeshift
congregation of interned Japanese
and Japanese-Americans
the duties of a priest.
He chanted sonorously
mindful of the dark outside
the mirror-like windows
of the barracks. "Wonder
of all Wonders. All beings
are Buddha, endowed
from the start with wisdom
   and virtue."

What can be added, what
taken away, we will never leave
this place, it lives in us
like a mother's embrace.
They thought with one mind
quietly and not without sadness.

When it was all over
they had tea
and went there separate ways.

On this morning.

In the attic we come across
winters long gone. By light
from a bare light bulb
we learn what life makes
of children all grown up.