Close Enough
by Kit Pancoast Nagamura
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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, |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 |
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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.
the something there was meant to be seen.
“It is the well,” you tell me
my teacher of landscapes
sacred, plain, and deep.
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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 |
two massive stones interlocked
at the garden’s mouth
at the garden’s mouth
exhaling the inner earthen
elixir of spring
elixir of spring
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.
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