Bury me down,
deep in the ground.
It's dark and it's cold,
for only the Earth to hold.

Bury me there,
for it's only fair.
As she promises spring
and winter she brings.

She's too much like me,
cycles of winter, you see.
Down, I should be.
Too deep to become a tree.
Too shallow to freeze.

Bury me far-sent,
for the sea to lament.
She's a beast left to thrash,
she'll take my body to crash.

I write poems and cry,
I sing out to the sky,
and she billows her wind
and cries, too, over my sins.

I'm too much like her.
And it's too much to endure,
the storm that I've spurred.
Wash away - habitual poseur,
drown them now - my life's saboteur.

Cracks in the surface of mountain soil
open and let greenery rip and despoil.
Shred and tear through both rock and stone
to make room for a growth, at last all it's own.

From both base to summit — Olympus to Wutai
it's time spent well, time spent to defy
what once was rigid, unmoving and strong
to crumple bit by bit into a breeze-laden song.

But the mountain doesn't wail, and neither will it fall
for the mountain is not worsened by it's transient shawl.

White and undriven — the billowing drifts
the spring it buries does not yet know
the beauty it carries beneath the snow
to shine upon the world — to merely exist.

To be such a flower, nature's delicate gift.
I relish their smile and call out to them so
but is it macabre to smile when their petals blow?
To look upon their death with the same rose-tints?

What would I give for such simple design:
to reach to the heavens and flower just once
and then to pass after my first occurrence,
to not weather the woes of repetition and time.

Or the rose-tint is as good on theirs as on mine,
maybe I, too, will have a charming last pulse —
like a falling of petals, like a crescendo and crux
and all at once, like leaves it will fall, all my malign.

Cupping the stem, I raise my blade
to snip off the young bud.
For all the sun poured to be made
I still slice off and toss to the mud.

I cannot say it was for your good,
pruned so that the harvest
might be as vast as it could,
till then neither of us may rest.

じゅんしゅする
どろ-だらけ-どう 。
やま いたむ。
--
Junshu suru
doro-darake-dō .
Yama itamu.
--
I am complacent to
these muddy roads.
The mountain sighs mournfully over me.

The pale off grey looms far among the shores
Beauty in the way it so honestly treads
Earnestly disparaging upon all that it weds
It rips upon our world, more ancient than war

To carry ones self with such a meticulous pride
Such a power to crash, to rip and to rend
It encompasses all of a life, to give and to end
Threads such as hers: to which my heart is tied.

There's a brook to which
my heart is tied.
Speckled reflection where beauty hide.
The threads with which my mornings stitch;
water's response to a golden finch.
My mind as slow as the creek does crawl.
These moments with which my life does spall.
Amongst the cold, the crisp:
a gifted bliss
that in these words I meekly scrawl.