WALL HANGING FOR KURI KINDI CAFE

 

WALL HANGING FOR KURI KINDI CAFE

            --for the friends of Mayumi Kaneko

Mayumi opens the door

and we all enter and look around.

When she came to us,

to Karen and I, half

her life ago, we did not know

that she was going to unite

our worlds, or that she

was going to heal our family

in the way that she would heal yours

at Kuri Kindi. She was not pouring

tea in your cup in Yokohama

She was a high school girl.

She came to be with our daughters

and became our daughter.

Even then she was carrying

rain forest wisdom,

ancient sources of ancestors

interconnecting kuri kindi, but we were blind.

Guardians of rivers and ancestors

had called to her, and she asked them,

What I can do? They told her,

The forest is on fire--

Insects and birds rushed to escape.

Kuri Kindi stayed behind. She was told

about the little bird, the hummingbird

from Peru--she told us this,

many years later. We didn’t

know it for decades! For years!

Little bird between water and fire

bringing a single drop of water

from its beak onto the fire below.

When the animals saw this,

they began to laugh at Kuri kindi.

Why are you doing this, they asked laughing.

And Kuri Kindi replied,

I am doing what I can do.

When Mayu returned to us,

she told this story. We knew

the elegance of Japan,

but now, the silence spoke

here and there, silence shifting

in its chair, and we

discovered loneliness

among the cranes, Senbazuru,

one thousand cranes, tsuru,

the loneliness that surrounds us all

with its treasure, Good luck, long life.

A Cuban hummingbird

makes nests the size of a quarter.

The bee hummingbird heart

beats 1260 times per minute

21 beats per second,

a flying jewel, migratory,

up down and backwards.

Kuri Kindi sweetens the moment.

Mayu massages Karen’s feet

as she tells us this story.

We are talking of Bashō, green tea,

and the long journey to the north

being like a bird flying across

the Pacific Ocean. One drop,

she says. I can be that one drop.

She is like a bird carrying bird wisdom.

A gold thread in a silk scarf.

Jim Bodeen

31 January 2022

Yakima-Yokohama