Every day, I trod the imperial Basho
Pond, feet placed neatly in footsteps
by the latent water. Staccato tongue
cuddled the acrolect of frogs and mist,
pugnacious through ice-capped moss.
Saffron robe cast up night’s cutlass
blades like refuge drawing lava from
crater floor, sparing my quiescence its
silhouette against these rustic plains
of forethought. At the chirps of robin’s
nest, up the Tea House Hermitage, a
life of incense strong-winged over bead-
drops of dew, distilled into innards of
cicada-hued wood beams, more arcane
than any frankincense tracing veins of
dead ghosts. I had remembered then,
briefly, to a Kafkaesque carapace down
the heart of maelstrom, where I moved
rough and crackled, dark gleam in what
was otherwise flame, razor-creased as
a slip of girl, egregious in my sail beyond
all the evidences of me, slow-fomenting
like dry wings puddling on Basho shore.