jealous moon hides face

sun’s matcha fragrance lingers—

sakura reveals

* The moon sits behind the clouds tonight; her face can only be seen through the reflection shimmering on the face of Tokyo Bay. Reflecting on the prior collection of haiku inscriptions, I sat on my balcony in Yokosuka with a cup of tea (felt like the sun) as the perfume of sakura below breezed by.

Just thirteen years earlier, I stood at the sakura tree below and photographed its blossoming the day my daughter was born. How fleeting is time, that it has been thirteen blossoms since and yet I have not seen the tree nor appreciated its journey in my life—save when her bloom is presented. 

The chair next to me used to fill itself with her company, but less of that now as I am aging out of the moment like the tree until I am back in season like sakura.

So much in nature tells us of humanity, as we seek truth amid deception in an age where beauty is a fleeting distraction from the ugly reality of time and misdirection that is always a mere trick of light. Nature is poetry and poetry by its very nature is political; it forces us to construct and deconstruct what we know versus what we think we know. If we are patient, the moon and sakura will show us the matcha.