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Three Asian Poems

Updated on January 18, 2018
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Richard F. Fleck is author of two dozen books, his latest being Desert Rims to Mountains High and Thoreau & Muir Among the Native Americans.

Gwaneum-Sa Temple at the base of Hallasan

Source
100 feet from the summit Hallasan
100 feet from the summit Hallasan | Source

Three Asian Poems

Mists of Halla San*

Up through creaking oaks

whose acorns once fed

ancient Korean kings

during very hungry times,

we emerge along dark and

spiny ridges leading up

toward a massive volcanic

dome looming in the mists

above the East China Sea.

Treeline shrubs clink

with icy crystals, and

gnarled pines bend in

snow like those of Korean

scroll paintings hanging

on warm museum walls

six thousand feet below.

And frozen mist spreads

to obscure almost everything

to heighten our awareness

of this Asian wilderness.


*This poem originally appeared in Appalachia


On Viewing Hiroshige's

Wood Block Prints

Japanese magic

when I glance

at a Hiroshige print--

Sails at sea,

twisted pines on shore,

gleaming Fuji in the distance--

I can hear those locusts buzz

in the heat of an eternal summer afternoon.

I can hear the hoarse notes of the mourning dove

far below snowy Mount Fuji,

Fuji San, the origin--

I breathe the scent of tatami mats,

I feel the hot burning waters of the ofuro,

I taste the fish and smell the cooking

from the underground court of restaurants

beneath the streets of Osaka.

It may be the plucked strings of an okoto

or the delicate note of a flute

on the Noh stage that evokes the magic--

Hiroshige's wood block prints.


Power of the Shogun*

As though the shogun's

power could reach out

through the centuries to

seize me, ancient gnarled

wooden planks of Ni jo jo

creak and squeak underfoot

like nightingales in pines

of a Japan of olden times.


*This poem original appeared in Poetry Nippon

Readers may be interested in seeing my other hub Three More Asian Poems.

© 2010 Richard Francis Fleck

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