The judges appreciated the feminine quality of this evocative piece, which skillfully recreates a moment in a person’s life. Residents of Kyoto and visitors to Japan who have had the pleasure of visiting the Ohara area would be able to imagine the story clearly, based on the vivid descriptions and their personal experiences.
– Karen Lee Tawarayama

*************
December

Like an old wish dropped in water and ruined,
we’d let our cows roam free,
lost track of our weaving,
and, like Orihime and Hikoboshi,
were permitted to meet only after a year’s time:
Accidentally drinking coffee
under the same Kamogawa magnolia.
We feigned surprise
and headed north without a word
until the river ended
and i took off my high heels
and walked barefoot down the highway.
He smoked a cigarette and we sat on the curb eating ice cream in december.
We didn’t say much
in the forest or even after we’d arrived in Ohara,
pine needles and narrow cement stairways
winding up to worn-down statues,
i thought of calling your name from the snow,
but i didn’t.
We rode the bus home in the dark and fell asleep drinking – a tiny lamp casting
cat-like shadows on the wall.

This was a lovely depiction of a flickering relationship whose end was nigh, although one of the couple did not realize it yet. The overall sadness of the piece tugged at the judges’ heartstrings. Though it might have taken place in any setting, it was the “skeleton of a dry cherry leaf” and autumn showing that “death could be beautiful” that belied a more than passing acquaintance with Japanese literature. The judges also felt that the contrast depicted between the evanescence of sparrows compared to their steps caught forever in cement had a particular “Kyoto flavor”.
– Karen Lee Tawarayama

*************
Sparrow Steps
by Amanda Huggins

Did you often recall that last afternoon in Haradani-en? I can still remember the clear blue skies, hear the leaves crackle underfoot. I held out the dry skeleton of a cherry leaf, told you autumn was proof that death could be beautiful. You took it from me, twisting the stem between your fingers.
‘So fragile,’ you said.
You’d lagged behind as we climbed the hill, and when we reached the top you paused, out of breath. I laughed, said we were getting older, but you didn’t reply. I think you hoped your silence would say nothing, would go unnoticed, yet I could hear every word you’d bitten back, could hear them echoing around Kinkakuji Temple.
We stopped at a bridge on the way back, and you sat on the steps to unfasten your boots, removed a small stone that was pressing into your heel. I crouched beside you, watched as you ran your fingertips over a row of bird footprints, captured forever in newly laid concrete.
‘Proof we can sometimes leave an eternal mark, that we live on after our beautiful deaths,’ you said.
I took a photograph of the prints next to your splayed hand; the immortal footsteps of sparrows, like tiny dinosaur fossils.
‘We should make a pledge,’ I said. ‘A vow that if we ever lose touch we’ll meet here at the sparrow steps ten years from today?’
I was so sure we’d never be apart. It was an easy promise.
You looked up at the cherry trees, and for a moment I remembered them in spring: petals delicate as insect wings, fluttering down like a whisper of moths, the trees bowing with the weight of their fleeting beauty.
That’s when I saw the uncertainty in your eyes.
‘Yes,’ you said, quietly. ‘We should do that.’

An evocative journey, including vignettes of Kyoto’s four seasons in keeping with Japanese literary and artistic traditions. Nature and human life are skillfully woven together through these images.
– Karen Lee Tawarayama

*************
Interlude: Kyoto
by Brenda Yates

Windows flung open, wide night brings itself indoors. But this air’s never
enough for me: no melancholy wannabe lotus-eater long  

endures those bitter onslaughts chilling down to my smallest bones, bones which
even now, despite spring, remember and hunger after sun-baked warmth.

*
Rainy season days, cloudbursts, thundering restless nights until wind turns
and dawn, breaking bright, fructifies promises, ones that rise in the dark
like colorless dreams while feverish green ideas sleep furiously. 

*
Overhanging heat, unruly July, ever-more lush August, brings
energy-sapping days, and nights too hot to sleep. Our languished spirits—  
complaints voiced—bed down for fitful slumber on not quite cool balconies.

*
Then another fall’s fiercely vivid death: autumn leaves on stoic ground
and chilly air just right for a wandering walk’s long meditation.  

Or to watch robed monks chase American children out of the temple
after finding they’d climbed behind Buddha to see what he looked like there. 

*
Opening the door, I leave home. Winter’s crisp breath excites my bare face.
You can laugh because you know what’s coming but hope’s inexhaustible  

(although this year might be almost identical): piled up, grotty snow
rutted, ice-glazed roads, frozen eyelashes, burning lungs, cheeks, ears and nose;  

fingertips, toes too cold to move, part of winter’s aged harvest of bones
when no happiness need apply, only waiting to fling this aside.