” Moon Viewing in Japan”, two poems.

 

Painting by the author

 Written after the tsunami….

 

 

 

Is there a moon viewing party

In Japan tonight?

Destruction, sorrow

Covers the land,

Despair, loss

Regulates the heart.

 

Perhaps the moon’s presence

Is of little interest

And less comfort.

Perhaps sorrow goes too deep

To raise eyes above shock and debris.

 

Yet,

Her gleam falls upon all

A compassionate blanketing

Of the Earth,

Softening the soiled,

Ravaged landscape,

A beacon of promise

Of the return to life,

Beauty to nature.

 

—

Two weeks and the cherry blossoms
Would have opened in Sendai.
Beautiful clouds of scented prayers
Falling upon upturned faces,
The eternal promise of hope for the earth,
Swept out to sea
With a good part of humanity.

I will sit beneath the moon tonight
Listening to frogs sing,
An owl in the woods
The birds settling in the dark—

My cherry tree is blooming
A small cloud of satin blossom–
I will count falling petals,
And offer these  as prayers.
–
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2011-2018

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

Tags: is there a moon viewing party in Japan tonight?, Japan, Tsunami