by Kevin Neal

It sounds like nonsense;
to imagine the space
between you and the sky.
The birds circling with their questions
like curious children.
Let them ask you,
are you meaningless like us ?
Come, be small and lonely.

Feel the weight of your existence;
how dark and insignificant your spot.
From up here you fade away
to a mote of dust.
Your problems don’t matter
any more than ours.

If you wait there long enough
for the sky to touch your face
you’ll become the grass.
What happened today ? you’ll ask,
but you’ll have no answer.
Only the birds with their questions
in the empty sky.
The distance, coming.

by Richard Taylor

It is not there and fills me, the salient void
that takes a vacant hand and tugs it
into the slim interstices between the ridges
of a carved hill.

The paths run asymptotic, and we’ll meet
in infinity, so far as we know, dash straight past
the fractal shapes and colors, people
who multiply themselves,

grow or shrink to know each other safe
in a day’s mortal perfection.  You and I
don’t bother them; they’ve long been here, granted
temporary asylum

like ourselves, except we are of those
created approximate, at odds to a fit, and so
must hurry on to riskier magnitudes.
I’ve known my leap

into the sundry abyss, the slow pool borrowing
its chill peace from the river’s roar, listened
to the bottom of the owl’s soft hoot
a moment longer

than the crowd would stay, when the wakeful
silence rings ethereal and thin.  The gap abides,
a lacuna with no clock, the ellipsis ever pending
our arrival,

hearts beating like wings quivering to light,
an apostrophe flitting above the quickened
word that hurries across an empty room,
the rain clean glade,

a lake taut and smooth as an eardrum to voices
on the other side of our blank and single space,
guessing about asylum in alien arms,
distance apart

become inner, where forgotten innocence returns
our cold star to a meadow full of daisies
to show you, if you come upon a moment wondering
what to do with itself.

by Richard Taylor

Kisses are the buttons
on love’s coat whenever
a winter comes sudden
or stays late.

The snug lumens
of the universe tell us so,
the planets that button up
a moonless night when a chill wind
scours the scarred earth,

and someone caring
that we be warm kisses us,
several times in a row
like a coat’s buttons, and if not
by invitation earned, then courtesy,
wisdom learned,

for if you are cold,
then I am dumb.

by Masaya Saito

I
Homecoming

me, in the tick
of the pendulum

Hanging a goldfish bowl

old-age blotches
my father’s hand

This tatami

where a futon was spread
my mother lying dead

Household altar

a candle flame
within, a wick

Through the window
my father hoeing

darker and darker

That evening
waiting for my mother

a pumpkin on the wooden floor

Chill after a bath

the tick
of the pendulum

The shoji screen

from behind it,
his single word of reply

In moonlight
my palm
0
I’m tired

II
The thatched eave

out of its shade
walks my shadow

Sweltering sky

my feet crunching the gravel
across the graveyard
A drop of sweat

splashes
the gravestone

My hands together in prayer

now apart,
I begin to walk

This path
through the verdant shade

toward the edge

Crouching
I retie a shoelace

cicadas screeching

Footsteps
one by one

through the tunnel

Myself
shimmering in heat haze

I walk on

The deserted school

its window
reflects my face, ageing

Passing by

a lady holding a parasol
fist in its shade

Beyond the cliff
where I stand

a rainbow