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Two hundred years is a long time to be standing in the same place. I walked slowly around the flashing koi in the murky pond. It’s the slender, healthy trees— sturdy sycamores along the road dropping their unshaven faces at your feet, maples writing elegant calligraphy in the cobalt sky—good strong trees. You notice the absence of age, of limbs twisted by living. In Shukkein Garden, the stinky nuts and colorful leaves are swept away. Paths are grooved from the attention of brooms whispering remember fish gills gasping for dust remember the sound steam makes rising from the body The scene in this flaming place burned into people after the atomic bomb turned everything to shadows or ashes. Is this what you came to poetry for? The gingko tree faced into the wind and stood against the blast. Still, you can sit under its thick arms and catch a flash of sunlight in a porcelain blue sky.
© 2004 by Edward Dougherty. Used by permission.