Denise
Rogers
Oh, I wish I
could reside with you awhile,
cooking rice in
a beaten copper pot,
spinning silk
on a nagging, noisy wheel,
painting
screens and writing tankas as you doze
over board games
on your creaky, footworn porch.
No life’s an
idyll, dear Hokusai,
but summer
evenings, we could walk
my old rat dog;
like ducklings, we will waddle,
comically slow.
Our destination is deep
in the petals
of peachblossum snows.
Why must it be,
my dear friend, Hokusai,
that your
village and my town never converge?
A valley farm
needs a well-worn mountain road.
Will time find
us hidden in spray from a cataract?
Let’s curl up
with each other, Hokusai,
as if we were
each other’s favorite book;
ours is a
country of pillows and snow,
our lives the
blank leaves of the sketchbook
on the floor of
your studio.
There are
actually sixty-four, but they don’t
tell you that. I
had to discover it myself,
in fact, one
winter when I had set out,
in the
twilight, thinking there was just one
more ahead. I
wasn’t alone, but that turned out
to be small
consolation. There was a woman
with a baby,
and an old man on foot.
There was a nun
making a pilgrimage
(and you know
how nuns can be).
And then there
was my mother,
who had never
really wanted to go.
I know, the
white-on-white of winter travel
would make a
good woodcut for Hiroshige:
travellers
hidden under round hats and capes;
a small brown
mule trudging along; a red
horse bearing
all my mother’s possessions,
being led by a
boy who can barely feel his toes.
But this is all
romance; it is nothing like the violence
of snowdrifts.
Our round hats merely hide our view.
Our capes and
cloaks are never warm enough.
The flakes of
snow bruise our cheeks,
and the ice,
like tiny spikes, invades our bones.
Why did I set
out that bitter evening? Usually,
I never believe
what I am told. Certainly no more
than you would
believe the moon succeeds the sun
rather than the
other way around! The difference
may not seem
important at the outset,
but these
distinctions have been known to provoke
hostilities. As
I believed the stories they told
about the Kegon
Falls at Nikko, I was sure
they must be
right about the maples at Tekona Shrine
and Bridge. I
visited the Bamboo Embankment
on less
information that this, stopping
for three days
at Kyobashi during the monsoon.
I never learn
that it takes longer than you think it will
to arrive. And
no journey is ever free of trouble.
There’s always
a child crying ceaselessly
along the
entire trail, and you stop a dozen times
for someone’s
old father stumbling along.
Yes, the
white-on-white of winter travel
would make a
good picture for Hiroshige.
Hokusai could
probably fashion one, too.
But pictures,
you know, never tell all the truth.
I almost
learned that at the Bamboo Embankment.
I did not know
about the extra station on the Kiso Road.
I did not count
on it being so very cold. Just one more
stop along the
way, and we could be at home.
But no one
speaks; no one sings, and I am
everyone’s
enemy. The worst of it
is that my own
mother will not look at me.
We are all
silent travelers in the snow:
white-on-white—a
virtual tour de force!
We emerge from
high hills and grandfatherly
pine trees, and
in a corner of the print
you see a short
and wholly inappropriate colophon.
Between being a
butterfly
and being a
woman,
there must be a
difference.
This difference
lies in the churchyard
behind St.
Stephen’s. Each Memorial Day,
old women drift
decorating
crumbling stones,
remembering
mother, reviving daughters
with yellow
peonies.
Butterflies and
women are not the same.
As I pass by
them, Painted Ladies
join me
silently; they never
seem to mind
our destination.
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