Japanese Form Poetry by SB Wright
She’s hidden her egg sack in the needles of a pine branch, a pale yellow susuwatari. A few golden strands of her web have snapped and congealed into a larger, tangled one. The larder appears full, two strings of “black pearls”.
the orb weaver
sitting motionless for days
nothing gold can stay
©️sbwright2023
Right now, my wife is teaching herself to play Keane’s, Somewhere Only We Know, on the concert grand. She’s probably frustrated she’s not getting it perfect, but something in that imperfection, in reaching for the right notes, generates an overwhelming sense of yūgen.
love’s labour
between the notes a single tear
rolls down my cheek
©️sbwright2023
One thing we kept noticing when we moved into our 120 year old farmhouse, was the little odd jobs that seemed to be jerry-rigged or a least done by someone with questionable experience and qualifications. Light switches were the most concerning. We thought it might be the “mend and make do” attitude common amoung a certain generation. We soon found out, however, that tradesmen didn’t want to turn up for “little jobs”.
fixing the leak
I call the plumber
with a big job
©️sbwright2023
South Australia’s Mid-North is littered with monuments to colonial hubris, skeletal settlements that proved the addage, “Rain follows the plow”, wrong.
last drinks
the old hotel floundering
in all directions
©️sbwright2023
I guess in a densely populated island country, consideration for others is as much a matter of survival as that of civility. Commuter trains packed with workers are silent for the most part, the press of humanity seems strange without the accompanying tension of loud voices on phones, people talking annimatedly, or music blasting the eardrums of nonchalant teens.
Tokyo rush-hour
not even the sound
of a car horn
©️Sbwright2023
The sound of water on tin draws me outside in the midst of a late autumn downpour. The split in the polytank, that I was leaving until term break to fix, is sending arcs of water into the air like an Italian fountain. Worried that the tank will split further under pressure, I open the outlet and flood the Bonsai garden, making it a temporary pond.
the sound of water
a frog jumps out of the
new pond
©️sbwright2023
My second school trip to Fuji and my colleague had managed to find a 3 star hotel with 5 star views of the mountain across Lake Kawaguchi. We arrived in the evening, Fujisan a deep blackness against the sky.
rising early
five star views
of fog
Nothing really prepares you for the immensity of a city the holds 30 million people. On the fifth floor of a YMCA building in central Tokyo, I gaze out the window, straining to find a feature beyond the mass of concrete and glass.
Tokyo skyline
as far as the eye can see
buildings on buildings
©️sbwright2023
The trick, I told myself, was to laugh at those embarassing memories of my teenage years that always seemed to ambush me unawares. Laughing at them, at myself, seemed to create some persepctive.
my teenage years
all the thickheaded things
not caught on camera
©️sbwright2023
When we first moved to the farmhouse, we rebuilt the chook pen. It was decided that we’d get a rooster and raise some chicks from eggs. Some feed, some hay and let nature take its course. Soon we’d be rolling in eggs, or so we thought. The rooster we got for free (what a deal) a great white charger of a chook we called Wellington. Wellington had his way with one of our Winedot hens, and then come spring, we hatched three cute chicks. They all turned out to be aggressive pricks of roosters. Being vegetarian, we spared them the chop. Instead, we got eight years of alarms at 3 o’clock each morning.
awoken
the lingering echo
of the rooster’s crow
©️sbwright2023
鵲の歌 / Magpie Song 