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Pilgrimage to a Gingko Tree

Two hundred years
is a long time to be standing
in the same place. I walked slowly
around the flashing koi in the murky pond.
It's the slender, healthy trees-
sturdy sycamores along the road
dropping their unshaven faces
at your feet, maples
writing elegant calligraphy
in the cobalt sky- good strong trees.
You notice the absence of age, of limbs
twisted by living. In Shukkein Garden,
the stinky nuts and colorful leaves
are swept away. Paths are grooved
from the attention of brooms whispering
remember fish gills gasping for dust
remember the sound steam makes
rising from the body
The scene in this flaming place
burned into people
after the atomic bomb turned
everything to shadows or ashes.
Is this what you came to poetry for?
The gingko tree faced into the wind
and stood against the blast. Still,
you can sit under its thick arms
and catch a flash of sunlight
in a porcelain blue sky.

Origami

Folded by an old woman, silver bird
what do you know? Your paper body
is slippery. You give the light back.

At the flash she dropped like a rag.
A single day, a single bird: the day
that repeats itself with each crease.

The hours stretch out like crows' wings.
Samuel said he wanted to come here
to help people forget the past. My eyes burn

with the day's unrelenting length.
My life is brief and my sight short.
No wonder she keeps turning paper
in her creased but unburned hands.