It was a brown boot, flecked lace, grey blue cuffs,
quality socks around the top, stepping out
on a gravel incline. The usual human shape,
a mute hillclimber’s thin outline
in occasional dots of Spring. Sleepy Poppy
cover at our feet, one behind your ear,
I watched you go – In Japan, it is a certain day in
Autumn
when your boss takes you on a near death experience
with thousands of other workers, and if you weigh
a little more than Michiko-san
you can hang on to a rock in the wind,
move between gusts of airborne particles
without the eye of it seeing you. If you weigh
a little more than Michiko, you lived to climb higher
turning at the viewing shack for the unfurling of Maple fire.
Some things happen on mountains. We realised Kansawa-san
and Michiko
were lovers, had been for years, so Kansawa knew ( if she
were not pegged
down in a moss lined crag, both huddled in like odd tropical birds, sure
luminosity, lichen and Lycra would weather any eye) that she would fly.
A waifslip powerhouse lift-off, light as that first year,
like Mr Kibitzers kite.
Halfway up, that shack we should reach, past the bones of previous school trips,
is deserted the following week as winter is announced by Tannoy
and the whole nation drives somewhere else - to a story
that leads
down to a winter beach. It is a solstice of stories on the shelf
where we left them. If we are lucky, the nuts left in water
makes milk for teatime. If the bailiffs have been and we find it empty,
stack the fire, hope the storm pins the past to the lichen crag
so you can unpack the notebook knapsack you were carrying,
take the poppy from behind your ear for the vase
on the table and see the storm’s eye pass.
