Barren is the light refrain again against 
that emptiness; a great stone 
                knocking at the door.

The artist encased,
must first conquer
the shell. Then,
as well, the hero.


The rock as egg
the egg as shell
the force: gravity 
the tree
tall enough, the slabs
wet enough, frozen streams
of unpeeled memory,
the instinct
thin as peach skin
over a grass knoll.
The hero, Momotaro.

Is it enough to say
it sits, just there? ensemble
with its light/dark dialog,
as if to understand such voids exist
between the student and the mu
as measureless to man?

If year by year
        Obaa-san laid out the laundry
        on a tear-

stained stair, listened momentarily,
then sang her lullaby
beside a stream that
                carried her hope away,

can we not say a Midwestern sky cried out
in its abandonment? wild and without 
face, where clouds once floated by
            on simple human shapes.

Could he hear her nightly wail echoed in
the sound of dusk that lengthened
on the mountain walls? 

True, 
no ogres were found on Shikoku Isle,
but the hardest rocks
                sang like temple bells
and every evening, Ojii-san returned.
                
Surely, the child intervenes;
Momotaro  recalls her weeping,
by the morning fire. 

Why ignore it?
Why ignore the art of it?
placed so, deliberately
beside a spring sliced stone,
shedding its gloomy winter kimono
Oh! She cried, A golden peach!

Did she think it more? (did he?)
Would she cradle it in her thin arms, 
sing to it as though it were
                        a child?

We exchange 
a fable for a knoll,
a name for a name
a cradle for granite  
with rocks for rivers, grass shoulders
                        to lean against.

And to whom should we apply this
light refrain again against 
        the look-back sea,
        the paper ocean shore?

                        Looks like his father!
                        Has his mother's grace.
  
Ha! He'd have had doubts about that too.
What stone begot Momotaro? Who is his father's
child? Perhaps Ailes is; perhaps he's not?
                                                                        
                         
Why linger on these remnants of a shell:
Human marks there are, as well 

perhaps he sits in that tree still
shimmering with darkness, 
or enlightened,
with a slightish bruise on one knee?

Perhaps he says,  'I look like me.'
A light refrain against 
that emptiness; a great stone 
                        knocking at the door.





next poem...

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