Poems by Lila Matsumoto

It’s here
 
Any minute now a pair of hands will crest the hill.
We’ll know, then,
when they’ve obscured the gloaming light.
Sheep eyes return to willow-wisps
and the barn owl’s call is really a child being eaten.
Turning a sudden corner, something small
and terrible is assuming a form
as when a sound, veined and fanged,
puts a cold and wet toe into the room.
Light follows, a long rectangle
from hallway to interior, where,
yellow, dust particles scatter indifferent to the confirmation.
Something which had been approaching.

Yard
 
Evening spider
             tiny emperor
Casts off on golden thread
over the field of grass.
Slowly
slowly the sky
the briery hedge and four dwarf shrubs
bruise black.
Shirts on the drying line harden
into nightshape.

The Day
 
Not
the sinking-stone worry
But the free memory of the day!
 
The pedal I push
is my foothold on morning,
beating the cannon, the creep
of a benign and faceless blank.
The words I mean to say
are running beside me rushing into the gutter. Others
have taken holiday to make villages
in the sand.
Come
Back. Words come back.
I want to intend,
to cleave the air with sure-foot.
Surely, wherever there is light,
people are growing their meanings.