The Beach in Winter

Yaki soba/tako yaki sign spins
outside the closed shop.

Pine tree leans,
dropped needles rusted.

Sparrows
flung from a tree.

Ducks disappear
between waves.

The fishing boat
moves deeper.

*******************

Beachcombing

A leaf,
red stalk
and veins

and on it
still – gold
glinting

now –
the shower
remains.

****************

Reds, yellows
on the wet
asphalt.

Sun
sifts
the air.

The trees
cathedral
Sunday.

*************

At the wind’s
coming

another
tumbles air

a moment
and

is
earth.

*************

To be
present
at the

fall
of a leaf –
to be

the instant
of touched
earth.

**************

Biwako

lake, mountains
and this

breathless
sweep

of sky.

What
warrants

such
munificence

of emptiness?

******************

this bone-chilling wind
and the numbing distances
of the heartless stars

*****************

tracks of the wagtail
random dashes in the snow
going where they go

*****************

still there

(at the desk
after running
the shore)

sky wind lake air

(Photos all taken not far from Omimaiko station near Lake Biwa)