AACP’s January 2023 Poetry Selection

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Poems by Frances Kakugawa

Voice from the Unborn

You promised me, eons ago,

A world, free of battlefields, soldiers, children

Abandoned in fear and hunger.

You offered me Hope, again and again.

A world, you said, where we will stand

Hand in hand, beyond color, religion, gender, age,

One race. One humanity.

You promised me a world

Free of poison in oceans, earth and air.

"You are the future", you told me,

"Come and be born in this world I will

Create for you."

My brothers and sisters who believed you

Are now old men and women, and they wait.

They wait.

Listen to my voice, your unborn child.

Eons ago, you sliced the chrysanthemum

Off its stalk and left it

Naked in the sun.

Over the ashes of Hiroshima,

Our victory was hailed.

Beneath that, my ancestors lay buried.

Stop using me, your unborn child

For promises and meaningless rhetoric.

The future is now. I can't wait any longer.

The future is now. I want to be born.

Today.

Dear 21st Century Farmer

Dear 21st Century Farmer,

Each time you place a seed into your soil,

What do you think about?

Do you think of fast cash

To replace your brain

For a larger, more digitized tractor?

Insect eradication for abundant crops?

Vocabulary rested on faster, more, faster, more

Or do faces of your grandchildren, their grandchildren

Play among the images in your head?

The inheritors of your soil.

Each time you place a seed into your soil,

Do you get down on your back,

Look up at white clouds dancing, dancing -

Pesticides free, gathering raindrops

For Earth’s purification?

Each time you place a seed into your soil,

Can you take a fistful of soil –

Taste the taste of soil

As they were before you were courted

By “Big 6” pesticide and GMO corporations –

BASF, Bayer, DuPont, Dow Chemical Co., Monsanto, Syngenta?

Oh, farmer of the 21st century,

Are you indignant of these questions?

Let me hear then, your “How dare you.

How dare you

Question the integrity of my soul.

How dare you

Before my grandchildren

And their future children.

I__am__not__a__farmer__for__sale!”

How Loud the Silence

In the midst of chaos

Be still, be still.

Shhhh.

What will poets do

Without the first bloom of Spring

Waltzing in the wind?

What will children do

Without slimy green frogs

Slipping through fingers?

What will Basho have seen

Without the leap of the frog

Splash! Then stillness again?

What will you do

Without the sound of stillness

In the morning dew?

What will I do

Without hummingbird wings

Whirring in sync?

Hush hush,

Be still, be still

Listen.

Written after turning off the radio.

“Voice from the Unborn” from the book “Dangerous Woman: Poetry for the Ageless”

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Poems by Amy Uyematsu

This Tree, That Tree

One poet reveals

a god sheltered

in every tree

Another claims

the young girl

who spirits a tree

Maybe it's truth

roots reaching roots

far beneath feet

Maybe it's age

retelling forest folklore

trunk to limbs to sky

Or simply a promise

of sakura blossoms

unfolding each spring

Finding Rumi In Peru

—September, 2019

Before I met you, I'd keep returning to love poems by Neruda and Rumi. For me, Neruda had an earthiness that made me feel skin and rain and sweet summer corn. But Rumi took me to an unexplainable place, weightless, radiant with delight and wonder.

And when we started to fall in love, though you were not a poet, you were also familiar with Neruda and Rumi—I knew you were unlike the other men I'd been with. It's said 'that when reciting his poems, Rumi would turn round and round, some even called him the 'drunken Sufi.' One night we found ourselves at a whirling dervish performance, the Sufi dancers spinning and spinning like we were those first months together—whirling ourselves into a world only we could know. And even now, after all these years, when we dance we keep opening some secret door into music, frenzy and surrender.

We've grown old but not too old to journey to Peru, Machu Picchu our destination. In the Sacred Valley, we go to Ollantaytambo, an Inca fortress built in the rocky hillside. Ollantaytambo, Patakancha, Urubamba— names with a melodic rhythm that's new to me. We walk through the cobble-stoned streets of the village and a store sign catches my eye: “Rumi." Excited, I tell our guide how much I love Rumi. She does not know the poet, explaining that rumi means stone in the ancient Quechua language. My excitement grows—how perfect a connection—so many of my poems contain rumi—from the tiny grey gravel in Zen gardens to black pebbles I bring home from the beach, river sculptures made from balancing stones of every size and shape, the elegant boulder a nisei gardener trucks home from the local San Gabriels to anchor his Japanese garden. And now these massive granite stones the Incas used to build Machu Picchu, a palace high in the Andes six centuries ago. Fitting, that Machu Picchu means "old mountain."

Rumi, the poet.

Rumi, the stone.

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Poems by AACP and a Newsletter Reader

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Haikus by Leonard Chan

On a New Night

Waxing gibbous moon

Lights the night after a rain

A tree twinkles bright

Popping everywhere

Reveals changes on this night

Seems the same to me

Speeding cars pass by

Where to at this late hour?

Revelers head home

Quiet Homes

Lonely rainy day

Cars swish by show life outside

Missing passed loved ones

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Haiku by Angela Zhao

Floods and no power

The wind broke my umbrella

I want to feel dry

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Haikus by Laura Nakamura

Maple leaves have changed

My mood turns inward

And I know I am still here

A bird flying by

Cats pounce on their prey

Now a target for instincts