Vol 1 No 1 2007
Takayama: A Dream In Japanese
1
You feel, so far inland,
in a seabird’s midnight cry
the loss of a baby daughter.
2
By the river, where paper houses
perch on stilts like herons
in a rising tide, I sit
and dangle feet in currents
white as milk with melted snow, and wait
till the river rises through my emptiness, fills
my belly my heart my breasts, and breaks
in ocean brine from my eyes.
3
Why did you leave me
for the open sky?
Clouds rise, too,
but in a fall of snow
return to the earth.
Reproduced with permission from The Ecstasy of Skeptics, House of Anansi, 1994
Steven Heighton