Aririsu

by Wendell Berry

I leave behind even my walking stick. My knife is in my pocket, but that I have forgot. I bring no car, no cell phone, no computer, no camera, no CD player, no fax, no TV, not even a book. I go into the woods. I sit on a log provided at no cost. It is the earth I’ve come to, the earth itself, sadly abused by the stupidity only humans are capable of but, as ever, itself. Free. A bargain! Get it while it lasts.

by

Tom Hennen

There are no creatures you cannot love.

A frog calling at God From the moon-filled ditch As you stand on the country road in the June night. The sound is enough to make the stars weep With happiness. In the morning the landscape green Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass. The day is carried across its hours Without any effort by the shining insects That are living their secret lives. The space between the prairie horizons Makes us ache with its beauty. Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue To the farthest cold dark in the universe. The cottonwood also talks to you Of breeze and speckled sunlight. You are at home in these great empty places along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs. You are comfortable in this spot so full of grace and being that it sparkles like jewels spilled on water.

Let’s be seals together and lie on the rocks in La Jolla,

and I’ll use your bum as my pillow,

and I’ll place one arm on your fur,

and we’ll sunbathe lazily like drunk humans,

and we’ll flop around to get comfortable,

and when ready to fill our tummies,

we’ll waddle to the edge

and we’ll count together to three,

I could listen to your life form morning to night:

The sound of your breath as it changes from asleep to awake.

I could lay with eyes closed and fill my mind with color

as your exhales oscillate and my ear drums produce a symphony

My favorites are when your frequencies overlay mine.

We make a chord, a set of chords, sometimes dissonant.

I wish we could return to the 5 billion star hotel whenever we wanted, the one in the Kawekas. We could take a short swim in the river, run away from sandflies, eat tomato soup and bread in candlelight in the hut. We could talk, uninterrupted, for hours, side by side, in separate sleeping bags. Or, we could share a sleeping bag this time. I wouldn’t resist the urge to hold your hand this time.

I know you’ve given up on hoping and believing them all to be true.

You’re quite mistaken, though, to think I deliberately make you blue.

Little do you know that I - I’m an audience to myself, too.

We sit in the theater and watch me on stage, side-by-side, me and you.

I cringe in the seat and grasp your hand, I observe as a visitor to the zoo.

Up there am I not performing at all, just feeling and saying and letting it spew.

And down here I’m just as bewildered, like “what?”

I’m just as far from the stage as you.

I hold the same playbill that you do

and watch the crazy shit I do

We followed maps, we followed strangers’

smiling advice.

I followed you and your black coat

through European sights.

I had you to myself.

We kept each other warm.

Slovakian snow,

in-love glow,

A Haiku observed by Arisu. Japanese customer, Mexican server.

“Tonkatsu” she said.

“Tonkotsu Ramen” he nods.