WHITE ENSO
  • home
  • About
  • submit
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
  • home
  • About
  • submit
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

Close Enough

                                                                     by Kit Pancoast Nagamura
Picture

​It’s close enough
to winter for air 
to put an icy hand
under our thin coats,
slipping sub-sternum 
with each 
intake of breath
as you and I walk
   the old Japanese garden


        no one knows how to maintain
                                            anymore,
​   
Picture
Picture
for it takes a lifetime to read
      the semaphores of mosses
             velveting one hillock only,
                 not the other,
            or to coax the headstrong brook to veer
          left instead of right
        then west
      to wash away evil
    into its reflection under the bridge.
​

​The gardener, I think,
is young yet and
set on making his mark
bent on training the plum trees
a tad too tightly,
making of the pond
a pool of clown-colored koi,
mistaking control theory
for control, but knows enough 
not to move the stones.
​
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
            The garden stones
                here from the start, know 
                      the alchemy of patience
                     their silent dialogue 
                 millennia in the making
             fills my eyes with tears.


            We head for the garden’s rear
        distancing approximately
     rocklike, not bumping or touching
   but certain of
 where we need to be placed
to safely share breath


overgrown in waxy dwarf bamboo
and grass lagniappes from passerines
a snaggletooth path of bricks
is roped off: unsafe, the sign reads
​
Picture
                       and here our shoulders touch, knowing
                       the something there was meant to be seen.

​                       “It is the well,” you tell me
                       my teacher of landscapes 
                       sacred, plain, and deep.


We must not do it
  but channeling a prior century
     we creep through the
          child-stealing shadows
                of the wet dragon’s lair
                         close enough to make out
Picture
two massive stones interlocked
at the garden’s mouth

exhaling the inner earthen 
elixir of spring
Picture
All photos by Kit Pancoast Nagamura
Kit Pancoast Nagamura completed a Ph.D. in literature shortly after moving to Japan permanently. She has co-hosted NHK World's HAIKU MASTERS for three years, and her haiku awards include Prizes of Excellence from Ito-en Oi Ocha International Contest and the Setouchi-Matsuyama International Photo/Haiku Contest, and first place in the 2020 Santoka International Haiga contest. A member of the Haiku International Association and Ginza Poetry Society, she also serves as one of the judges for Washington D.C.’s international Golden Haiku Poetry Contest and the Setouchi Matsuyama International Haiku Contest. Her newest book, Grit, Grace, and Gold (Kodansha America, 2020), spotlights sports in haiku and includes work from international guests. She is married and has a son who reads almost all she writes with a superb critical eye.
Use and/or duplication of any material on White Enso is strictly prohibited without express and written permission from the author and/or owner.
Picture
Return to Table of Contents

Proudly powered by Weebly