YOUR PASSING, WHILE ROOMING
AT A JAPANESE RICE FARM
by Ian Haight
Alone among weed-thorns, you roamed
black hills, found stream-sourcing
springs;
but here, ice drifts in a river’s tug.
Your coat coppered in the sun’s fingers;
but here, the moon limns clouds.
You sat silent in the night suns’ light,
watched for disturbances
in the farm fields.
Here, the white
of Hikone Castle—
snow falls
a forest burnt, ashes.
Here, I long for a
longer premonition, for my eyes
to have been given weeks of daylight:
last night
I saw you free-roaming sweet grass
by the river’s curve under oak trees.
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