Japan Was On His Bucket List
Why did he have to go to Japan?
That May.
It was too far for an impulse trip.
Even old people book tickets
for the following spring. Why couldn’t
he see Zen gardens and eat authentic sushi
later, when he might not need
chemo pills in his carry-on?
He was only twenty-nine.
Why did he have to go to Japan?
That May. Not the following one.
And make me concede
that hilltop castles with curving roofs
might not be waiting for him
in the years to come.
The Tiger and the Strawberry: A Buddhist Story
Chased by a tiger
to the edge of a cliff,
a woman tried to escape
by climbing down a vine, only to see
a tiger prowling below. Soon after,
two mice scurried out of the rocks
to chew the vine holding her aloft.
That’s when the woman reached
for a strawberry growing
within her grasp.
The story makes me ache all over.
Tiger above, tiger below—
just like my own existence.
Yet the woman
relishes the strawberry,
filling her mouth
with one last sweet bite.