Nancy Gaffield
Kyoto
No one sees the wild ducks banked on the river’s edge.
Not many hear them either as the office workers
spill out onto the pavement; the river’s invisible
from there. A piece of moon hangs above Matsubara
Bridge, one by one the lights of Sakae dori
scrub out more of the sky.
I have lost my way
in Japan’s old capital and stop a stranger,
a man from Yamagata, who does not understand.
Instead he tells me about his lost son,
how a swallow came to nest in the eaves
of his house. His dead son has returned
and now there are a whole family
of swallows—they call him grandfather.
Page(s) 23
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