The world of dew
Is a world of dew, and yet,
And yet...*
     - Kobayashi Issa

Two dozen dew drops dazzling:
twenty four worlds; one more year?
An expectation, and yet
Issa's words are clear.

Control: the only thing he seemed to care for –
and why did sonatas disturb him so?

He liked people who would never say "No",
found production an important pursuit,

felt generosity somewhat of a chore,
and didn't give change to the destitute.

Do my children love me? never crossed his mind,
which made sense because he'd always bought their affection.

Dismissing depression and dejection,
he found comfort in ruining another's day

(they'd take advantage of him if he was kind!);
"In the end," he'd say, "they didn't win, did they?"

Lavender parted by blunt wind:
the unkempt morning hair
of a park's running path.
Pale-green grass crawls up everywhere
in tufts like a thousand lost toupées.

In spring
cars, northbound from San Diego,
packed with kids and camping tools
or slimmer businessmen,
get full view of it:
                             a transient glance
between La Jolla and Los Angeles,
a moment of flashing color amid asphalt miles.

1.
"In the future," she said,
"you'll see something similar,
a group of twenty-something-year-olds talking,
and think of your past self as sweet."

If this is true,
what, then, will I have lost?

2.
I sometimes dream of a flawless garden
emptied of philosophies,
all flowering assured.

Finding myself back there someday,
will it be the same
though I'll only see

the unwatered bits baking in open sun,
the unlocked, rusting gate
the gardener – drunk on the job –  left open?

3.
I resent what she said.
It suggests
that the older I get,
the less I'll see
of an increasingly disliked present,
and I can't dislike the present;
it's all that's ever here, there,
anywhere.

In great waves of light the grain flows westward,
toward nothing,
and its neutral glint (fugitive, shiny, present)
holds forever,
is gone, then is there.

Colorless
as these reflections are, wordlessly possessed
by waves
they'll never assess,
they comfort.

Horace had already sung
when pearly gates envisioned
led a heathen to be hung.

All that's left of history
is (and will always be )
philosophical bankruptcy.