Bamboo
shadows
in grayscale
dance across
a whitewashed
bedroom wall
leafy patterns sway
recalling memories
of our paper house
near Kyoto
where bamboo stalks
were silhouetted
outside thin shoji
screens
tall and straight,
in the strongest wind;
unbending,
they survived better
than our flimsy,
fragile house,
now nothing more than
a childhood memory
while the bamboo
became
a magnificent
grove,
a forest
of dancing leaves
in the distance
wind chimes tinkle…