Polished lake, hand-rubbed with burnt straw,
wet sand to imitate antiquity; rotten-stone
popped rabbits from the coarse ocean waves
in traditional form where cloud-dragons grazed
and good-fortune smiled from the common sky.

But about that stolen rock, child; your first earth-work
-- a water sculpture of original gardens placed just so,
its gentle flow in shimmers of mirage -- good thing, too,
little culprit Isamu, as you kneeled by the purloined rock
that would someday cross the sea to span the continent
of your imagination. Was he amused to see you there,
beside that Inland Sea, staring at his shoes so furtively?

All you saw in them was you, 'Isa-amu!', startled little fish,
your face reflected like the sun on polished black stone.
The shoe moved on and so did you. Mr. Haruhiko gave no sign
he'd recognized his stolen rock was critically embedded
in your childhood design; What relief! Oh, lucky Isamu

crafter of small tributaries of your mind's meander
past the early carvings, past a rose bush left behind;
beneath a surface turbulence, where cherry blossoms
gather wind, were images that you embraced for life;
a stolen rock and, surely, Mr. Haruhiko's smile?