En route 7:11 am 20/12/98

The rain clouds close in, like a rucksack being drawn shut
Orange tipped clouds over brown-orange vegetation,
Like sodium light.

Like the voices of festing Brazilians from the back of this bus
going to Christmases,
of music, family and samba-ah.

Dew drop meteors whiz past on the window
We’re in a tunnel. Sodium lamps reflect in the drops
A Christmas tree twinkling Milky way,
Within the fog on the glass,
A pulsating aurora borealis.

Mountains. Winding roads.
The mist is floating.
Mystery restored.
The Tao waits in the whisps
Beyond the shadowy forest environs.

In Japan

at an art gallery

I met a girl who is 18

Who is using the upstairs as a studio

Her design was a human figure with two hands

Bursting

Forth from the belly.

I told her the person looked pregnant

Like it was giving birth to artist’s hands.

She had found at a pond near her house, near a Shinto shrine, an iridescent green black purple bug.

Back up. At the jinja near her house there comes a fox around. She, walking there one day found this bug. Then very near a pair of bird wings, rather salivated upon with one bone still attached to one of the wings. Soon after or before, she saw a snake slither between the two and into the pond. She put the two together, beetle in the center as if it had wings. She said it’s like a human. I told her it made me think of an angel. Her other works were human figures. A man-shaped dark purpley outline on an oil blackened canvas, inside, staunch abysmal black ears and below the knees were red. She took the canvas and from behind she thumped where the heart would be. Thump. Thump. Thump.