"komorebi" poems
Lying beneath trees in the heat of the day cannot possibly be compared to any other pastime: to watch the light toy with the leaves, shining bright and brighter in the ever-changing gaps in the leaves turned dark by the shadow. The interplay between the light and the leaves in ever-ongoing banter and they hate to quit their game when the sun moves too far beneath the horizon for the light to reach above the boughs and must return to its source. The wind plays a part in the sport as well, when it rustles the leaves and causes a sparkle in the variance of illumination. Tortoiseshell patterns scatter along your limbs and features and tumble off the cliffs of your sides into the grass you recline on. The filter of light casts playful interlocking patterns of light and dark impossible to decode without the proper encryption, forever lasting while the world speeds past their lazy game.
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 11:39 PM UTC
n. A homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and grief for the lost places of your past, places that never were.
insatiability makes its burrow
in my gall bladder,
wringing bile from the *****
craving toxins to purge.
i thirst for sweet lexical gaps,
holes in patterns,
dots that don't make shapes
but still gladly connect
komorebi
n. The sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees
loveliest in the distinction
it is only komorebi
once filtered, green soul
bleeding through
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 4:58 PM UTC
Bare feet torn on muddy grass.
Blink slowly,
feel the wind between your fingers.
Tilt your head,
offer your throat to the sun.
Laugh,
make music with the birds.
Run as fast as you can,
stop to sing with the crickets.
Wander slowly, close your eyes,
feel the sun play symphonies on your arms,
skin speckled with the light of every star.
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 7:33 PM UTC
kids march to school,
merry, hands linked,
socks strangling calves,
backpacks swelling with milk teeth,
dangerous smiles.
in the centre they stand,
fronds shivering overhead,
buttress roots clutching earth
like they know what’s coming.
bags dropped in a ring,
offerings to something older
than the walls they study in.
fractures komorebi,
and in its faded gold
i see pareidolia,
grinning from the leaves.
the tree is temple and witness both.
the trunks sway in a rhythm
older than speech.
a tree at the border warns:
don’t take pride in the faces—
power is the thing they can’t hold.
if, my friend, you see the tree
cast out its own,
know those who give the orders
are across the ocean—
safe, distant, very clean.
owls, fat with promises,
every five years
stuff a new child’s face
into the stump’s rot
and call it a future.
the old tree votes unanimously
to shed its skin once more—
they call it progress,
call the rot reform.
loosen your roots;
the wind doesn’t care
which children
it strips for kindling.
Sep 27, 2025
Sep 27, 2025 at 7:50 AM UTC
we saw the sun through the tree's
and found something in ourselves
komorebi (n.) sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees
Jul 28, 2013
Jul 28, 2013 at 4:32 AM UTC
Below, blades are not
safe from snooping golden glares.
And at night, the moon.
Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014 at 11:02 PM UTC
She’ll wander back to you again,
but drawn by the string
of ineffable instinct—kissing the sand
of your beaches still damp
by the routine of her departure.
Yet as she recedes,
you already ache her homecoming
as though longing for an estranged relative.
You count the years
by the bitterest point
of every winter, and
value your harvests
against the cruelty of the drought—
and even when she rearranges herself
nightly, by increments you’ve already calculated
by meticulous observation,
somehow good fortune owes you eternity,
even as it crumbles under the weight
of its own impermanence.
You’ve never dealt well with entropy;
all that came before you, which also happens
to survive you—an honorary god.
Stranded on earth,
you monitor your greying scalp as grimly
as you decry a darkening sky above you succumbing
to the certainty of winter, but
even she is ebbing, too.
You curse her departure like an abandoned child,
but she had never sinned against you—
that was your idea.
You mourn the day she repossesses
with mortal anguish,
yet you still find a way to forgive her
when she sends Dawn
to shine his light between the trees.
Aug 31, 2015
Aug 31, 2015 at 7:44 PM UTC
I think you leave little bits of yourself in the trees
I can always see you in them
Your energy is constantly intertwining with nature
And when I'm in nature it's almost like you're there; in the mountains, the trees, the wildflowers.
It's the tsunami waves of missing you
It's the warm sunny days where everything is alive and singing, "He's all around you, just look."
It's that feeling that you get when you're on a mountain looking up at the sky and realizing how small you really are.
You're the boy who plays with the moon, and I'm the girl watching, mesmerized by the way you two move.
It's that moment when you love nature so much that it crushes you, because you know that you don't belong.
We are built to destroy, and the world deserves so much better than that.
I know I am a disaster, but you make me feel less evil than I've made myself out to be.
I feel more like a tree when I'm with you.
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 1:44 AM UTC
I wrote about the pinstriped girls whose elbows make you feel alive.
but I have tree sap in my veins
filled to the brim with leaves,
eaves that drip holy water
charcoal in my hair and
bluets follow where I
step, I am komorebi
the sun will always
always, always
find
me.
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 9:09 PM UTC
if
I had
to describe you,
in one word,
it would be
"komorebi"
the sunlight that shines through the leaves
you are always there,
even when you aren't
i used to listen to music, loud, until my heart began to jump
but after meeting you,
the loud music became too weak
I used to make wishes at 11:11,
but now I rather spend my minute making sure you remember to make your wish
you've taken up nearly every inch of my head
i can't get your name out of my mouth since you kissed it
Sep 17, 2015
Sep 17, 2015 at 11:18 PM UTC
because the stream cuts me into paths every morning:
makes me shallow and deep, soft, jagged and drifting
and we all greet the crayfish in miller’s creek eventually:
become ships in the komorebi
become chips off of secret rock below the rusty pylon
on a hilltop, invisible, quietly
pinging signals to the strangers nextdoor from a raspberry bush
because we all become scarecrows, lost
in tomato vine towns
and red maple roots and branches
scared to disturb the dirt or the clouds
because sometimes the bats come out at dusk
to enrapture small ghosts that hang on wilted branches in the woods
climbing toward where the sun used to be
and i join them when that little river runs deep enough
Sep 23, 2024
Sep 23, 2024 at 10:53 AM UTC
Instead of choosing wings to soar through the sky
We chose our hands, together, intertwined
We are still so fascinated by the sky
Why is simply dreaming considered such a crime?
The summer watches autumn from a distance
And I imagine what its appearance may be
Is it full of admiration, full of love?
I realize that our future is impossible
Summer rains drizzle water droplets everywhere
Sunbeams filter through the leaves, named komorebi
So many years before you introduced your name,
Was it really you? I question to this day.
Today is once in a millennium, when gravity falls asleep
Let's stand in the sun's blind spot and leave planet earth behind
We'll aim for a place where it can't reach us, when it opens its eyes
On three, let's stamp our feet and float away from here
Let's go
Ikou
Let's go
Hearts that are frozen in winter bring the summer close
In the midst of this dizzy scene, you're the only one who slows
Since meeting you that day, my nightmares disappear
I waited tied by gravity, now let's make it real
Today is once in a millennium, when gravity falls asleep
Jumping to the sound of fireworks, let's fly out of here
We'll aim for a place where it can't reach us, when it opens its eyes
On three, let's stamp our feet and float away from here
Let's go
Ikou
Let's go
Just a bit farther beyond destiny
Just a bit after civilization (Let's go!)
Just a little bit farther beyond destiny
Just a little bit farther,
So let's go
We'll hoist these sails, filled with our dreams
Crossing the night for the day we await
Fulfil this with nothing but our hopes and fantasies
Put our arms around each other, we'll make it work somehow
It doesn't mean, we're not afraid,
but this is unstoppable
Although we tried, to save the day,
but this isn’t worth it all
Our love says, — a voice speaks,
It says to- "Just go!"
Dec 21, 2020
Dec 21, 2020 at 7:25 AM UTC
drunk on melancholy, i wander aimlessly
through the solemn state of “komorebi”,
where the sun dances in between leaves,
reflecting its countless memories.
if i had to describe how lonely each step feels,
I would tip-toe around intangible infinity.
my eyes gaze at the neighborhood like
a veil carries me through each door.
and it hurts to hear the laughter inside
because none of it has company anymore.
I wonder if the girls I spent my childhood with
are still behind those walls, in united reminiscence,
or am I the only loner chasing the spirits of the past,
lingering in each pebble my feet passes by.
© fey (02/04/2021)
Apr 2, 2021
Apr 2, 2021 at 12:12 PM UTC
I'm the tree and you are the sunlight,
sunlight that shines through me.
Crying alone,
It is still raining,
Well that means
the pain is still remaining.
Why is this place is so dark,
There's no room to park,
No room to place myself in the dark,
Also no space to park the pain.
Listen we need to run,
Or else they'll point out the gun,
A gun that hits us everytime they open
Their mouth,
They have no doubt.
I thought we're done,
Our dreams that are gone,
There's no cure,
When there's no reason to be sure.
You saved me from darkness,
A friendship that is full of pureness,
We deserve everything,
But we don't have anyhting,
The destinsy is jealous of us.
We don't know on what will happen next,
We can't take those assumptions and jinx it.
You taught me on how to be brave,
But it ended up seeing our bodies on the grave.
There's hope,
Help me to climb up using that rope,
Don't make me fall,
When there's no one to catch.
Smile like there's no tomorrow,
Smile like there's no one against our dreams,
Just smile,
Your happiness, is my happiness.
Time passes by,
Does our friendship will last long?,
I hope so,
You're the only friend that I have.
A friend that I know that will never leave me.
We could stop the rain,
And it means we could also stop our pain,
Give it to me,
I will take your pain,
And you take mine,
Lets share this road,
A rocky road.
It will end soon,
Look at that moon,
I prefer it than the sun.
The sun rise,
While the moon go down.
In my dream, we we're both happy,
It sometimes make me want not to wake up anymore.
I don't want to wake anymore,
I want to stay in my dreams wherein everything is impossible to happen.
Everything in this world are made of love.
Knowing that love can't change a thing,
Love that can't make people stay.
We we're against the world,
Word by word,
We don't want to listen,
All we want is to be heard.
Let me be with you until the end,
Lets make this friendship last long,
Lets stay by each others side and share shoulders to bury our face and cry together.
We can make it, as long as we're together.
Let us hold hand and make everything possible.
May 27, 2018
May 27, 2018 at 6:00 AM UTC
There’s this word in Japanese “komorebi” it pictures the light that is filtered through the leaves on a tree. It’s supposed to represent the nostalgia, that someone feels as they look upon a memory. I disagree with nostalgia, it means that you miss something that you left behind. If you miss it so much, why must you see it from such a distorted sense? No. In my case, it was never nostalgia. I only saw the light through the leaves because I didn’t want to go blind. I only left the love behind because I didn’t want the pain that came with it. So why, I ask do you look back at the pain?
Apr 7, 2020
Apr 7, 2020 at 7:57 PM UTC
The trees tower over
as if they’re watching me,
eyes lurking in the tall shadows
I take a deep breath, well aware of the sound of my pounding heart, something that seems to align with the life breathing here, green and alive
I feel lost
Like I’ve slipped between the cracks of the comforts of what’s supposed to be mine,
Slipped away from the familiar memory of happiness
Away from the scent of faint lavender and drowsy eyes,
where I can hide from the troubles through sleep
But at the same time, I think this is home
That somewhere deep inside, lies the curve of the stone path, the veins of the leaves that have fallen, everything and nothing at the same time
That I could write myself into here, the life, and settle as if nothing has changed.
My fragile life, woven and held into the above branches, somehow daring to breathe
Home
I look up, taking in the thicket of leaves above, blocking the sun
The one hiding the sky, what really lies out there beyond this forest
The dark.
Yet even then, the light shines through,
the sun somehow managing to paint the leaves in a golden aura
Continuing to warm the land from the outside, never turning away. Filtering into the impossible, breaking all the barriers
Rays that will always reach
Maybe in the real world, in what’s outside in this little sanctuary, the real sun is too harsh for me
Maybe I’ll burn, sparks and flames hidden inside my flesh finally meeting the air
Turning into nothing but ashes washed away by soil.
But right now, in this home,
I'll always have light
Aug 23, 2020
Aug 23, 2020 at 5:32 PM UTC
i stare at the ground
at the komorebi
and look at the way
the sun
is beaten,
broken,
demolished
and abused
by the branches
and the leaves
of the trees overhead.
they maul
and ******
the beauty of the natural light
the light that always
seems to shine on you
and brighten the ground before you
the sun
kissing your reddening cheeks
and making your eyes
twinkle even more
than they already do.
Apr 28, 2018
Apr 28, 2018 at 6:32 PM UTC
got caught up talking
balked through the window and fell through the back door
umbrella still in bloom
left rings of condensation as footsteps
and also frostbite in 60 degree weather
and also footsteps for nobodies to follow
freaked out by stale nature
valley-cracked teeth
translucent petals poking through nag champa clouds
lost spider solitaire
twenty-one times in a row
lost all the gaba napping in classrooms
and spinning circles around itself
untuned cerebellum in atrophy against the spins
lost it
won an advil liqui-gel
and quickly quit:
jumped off the peak of its dose-response curve
into the pool of a hallucinogenic july
doesn’t matter:
komorebi’s turned apocalyptic;
sunset's turned subvision
now you make shadows on the mirror and wet-floor signs on the tile
get caught in spiderwebs not a foot outside your bedroom
blast faith through android speakers suffocating in her comforter
drown your plants in ***** water
never heard a silver lining
only eat up deserts
for the cacti that’ll propagate later in your throat:
a seventy-five cent zinnia’s last whiskey-driven photosynthesis
rootbound
Jan 26, 2025
Jan 26, 2025 at 10:41 AM UTC