What is it? Something sought by everyone? Suddenly it splits me in two.

I feel free to walk anywhere, at least for now. I stride over the distant past.

Sometime ago, in a silence stronger than soy beans popping in the pan.

Hope? Waiting for footsteps? Perhaps to become a Heian court lady

surrounded by a screen of illusions waiting for some prince?

Or is it the prayer of a wife in war-time, anxious for her man in the field?

Don’t say it rises like a spinning wheel without hitting all the rungs.

Is it resolution? The blazing blue fame of mothers secretly resisting their patriarchs?

But I can’t get by on that alone. Why not simply break out?

I only have to get the rhythm down to fly through the day to day.

Like a pilot, astronaut I too am in a capsule, though.

~Atsumi Ikuko*

*cited:

Women Poets of Japan

K Rexroth & Ikuko  Atsumi