Like One who Has Mingled Freely with the World

I cannot fly, I jump and jump to imitate a bird.

Surrounded by children, I leap up

with a huge silk scarf around my shoulders

look like a crane, They laugh and laugh

and push me into a rabbit skin and watch.

At night I glint with long ears and peep through

window misted with the steam from a tea kettle.

hoping that they'll let me in. I'm mostly alone.

They want to keep me as a legend:

invisible, silly, a hopeless woman-chaser.

That's what I was to the girl in a wedding kimono.

She screamed when I popped up from the rice paddy

like a big frog, sniffed her musk, aroused, and got

very tired. There's no harm in me except some

occasional cuts. They're meant to remind you of life.

Dirty, honest, lonely--if the sun was a pool

of red ink, I'd dive in and come out

beautiful, tanned, cancerous. Death

might cheer me up, make me feel

more human, Perched on a wooden fence,

I hold an umbrella up against the clear sky

but no bird or animal falls from the sun,

It looks bigger than yesterday, like a bad sore

geese have pecked at over and over, and now

it's bulging, festering, ready to gush down

and drown us. I won't tell anyone about it, I wait.

It might drop some riches, some food, some wings.