View #45

after Hokusai and Hiroshige I dreamt half my life was spent in wonder, and never suspected. So immersed in the moment I forgot I was ever there. Red-tailed hawk turning resistance into ecstasy. The patrolmen joking with the drunk whose butt seemed glued to the sidewalk. A coral quince blossom in winter, pink as a lover’s present. And tilting my bamboo umbrella against the warm slant of rain, was I not a happy peasant crossing the great bay on a bridge that began who knows when, and will end who knows when?