To D

To D,

If you are in Heaven and near God,

please ask him for mercy

Please ask him not to take any more lives of
fathers, mothers, husbands, wives,
children, and friends
from the people of Japan

Mr. Reid

I walked past the funeral home today

I looked in the window remembering the cold February day

And I saw Mr. Reid looking at me from inside the window

while talking on the phone

I looked away

and wondered if the old Irishman had remembered me

The New Yorker Cover

It looks like a cherry tree standing in the middle of the dark ground. Its pink blossoms shape like symbol of nuclear plant/power; some petals are being blown away.  The picture is called "Dark Spring."

It's the cover of March 28th issue of The New Yorker.  I was so disturbed by it I had to send a complaint e-mail to the editor.  To me, the picture was suggesting something like, "hope contaminated".

Cherry blossoms are very special to many Japanese, and the season is about to come to the affected area.  Everyone there, I'm sure, is looking forward to seeing them.  After the long winter,  Cherry blossoms come as a sign of life - make people who gather under the tree giddy and happy.

I may be overreacting, I may feel differently tomorrow, but I wish that The New Yorker didn't pick the picture for its cover.

Tomorrow

It's Sunday, around 7:00 p.m.
I want to catch a plane and fly across the ocean right now

I want to tug him down here and talk to him

I want to see my mother

I don't want to be here, far away from everyone, living and dead

I want the sun to come out now from behind the church tower over there

and I want to be at work

I want tomorrow right now

I know I can't get any of those, so I eat some chocolate.

Spring Blossoms

I hope there are lots of plum and cherry trees in northeastern Honshu, Japan.

Magnolia, lilac, and dogwood too.  

I hope every mountain there
is studded with plenty of those Spring-blossoming trees. 

They can soon make the mountains blush
so that people can look away sometimes 

and find the soft glow of delicate colors
among the ever-greens on the hill-side.

Dead Birds

In Manhattan, in the last few days I saw, though it may sound so strange, what looked like a sandpiper, dead.  I saw a dying pigeon as well.  I remembered D had written about dead pigeons -- so I dug it out.   It's short, but here it is.  

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Since this cold snap began I've seen four dead pigeons.  One, in the middle of Ninth Avenue and Forty-Fifth Street, looked like an emblem of a pigeon.  

Another, I saw the day before it died.  Walking to the subway on the first really cold day, on my way to work, I saw a pigeon which limped wretchedly and didn't get out of my way when I passed it.  The next morning I saw it again, dead.  It was in the same spot I had seen it the day before, only its head was leaning against the wall of the Democratic Social Club.  

Remains of Christmas

I smelled Christmas tree at the park this morning.
It came to me almost at the end of my first lap on the running track.  I looked around but couldn't see the source of it.  So I got off the track and walked over to where the smell was possibly coming from - a small enclosed garden trimmed with several benches facing it.

I saw newly shredded wood chips - remains of dead Christmas trees, scattered on bare dark soil.  It was nice to see the dead contributing something physically to the future, other than make rooms for the rising generation.

I remember the last real Christmas we had with a tree.  I remember finding the tree, which D and his Mom had bought, standing by the window when I came home from work.   Both D and Mom were smiling at me by that beautiful tree -- all three of them (the two people and the tree) somehow looked astonishingly dignified.

Later we decorated the tree with our sort of funky ornaments, many of them we had made ourselves.  We also had an Advent calendar that D got at the Met, which he let me open each little window every day.

18 % Gray

I can't even get near that proper number,
always too dark or too light
too intimate or too far back,
forever think about me, me and myself
My pancakes are too runny or too lumpy
meat is always ruined when I cook
I break or lose things I love first
toothpaste tube is squeezed in the middle

Uttered words that should never have come out of me and
unsaid words that should have given to him with all my heart
Stack of both are left behind with me,
I just don't know what to do with them

But now no one is forced to tolerate me
what is missing or excessing is totally for my own inconvenience.
With my cat, who can never get hurt by my words nor my silence,
I enjoy my little imperfect life.

Wish

What is chewing me now is my own refusal to reality in the past.   His wish was never said probably because of my selfish, stubborn hope that he would get better and come home again  (as he had many times in the past) .

I want to tell people not to end up like me, not to avoid talking about death, especially when it comes into perspective.  The sick one is far more dauntless and noble about it than you are.  

When I'm gone, please burn my body (and leave my soul alone), my thanks and apology in advance, to whoever has to take care of the mess of my life.

            --phew, that was heavy.