Laughing Knees

Lacquer Vines on the trunk of a Beech tree, autumn, Oze Marsh, Gunma Prefecture, 1994.

It is time to turn on incandescent lights while the skies harbor the new arrival of nimbus clouds. Summer has passed, giving way to the slow grip of winter. I sit further back from the window, drawing inward to the map of my mind. Soon excursions will issue challenges from the tips of my shoes, kicking through the bones of leaves, and leaving a wake of assurance and regret. Grasshoppers and mantises shrivel into leaves. Lizards and toads incorporate the earth, like clods of inchoate dreams. The abandoned cries of dun minded birds ring out from the quivering branches, unchallenged and brave, small breasts held out towards the inevitable cold. And the light, which heated the rooms of my summer reveries, fades into sleep. Sleep and stillness. The ship heading into a grey and silent peril.