Kevin Smith’s ‘NIGHT HERON UNDER A CRESCENT MOON’

from Another Day

Japanese wood-block print, Ohara Koson, 1877-1945

One could easily miss it. A small
gallery on a back street of this sprawling

city barely declares itself.
Inside, the lights dull to a fog

of yellow, the prints set back behind
plate glass, framed by dark timber.

A woman comes from another room,
draws my attention to a sign that tells

what I must pay in yen and takes
my money. When I turn she’s gone:

silence had erased her. And no one else
is here. My eyes adjust to the low

light and I realise now the lack
of noise, how cushioned the air behind

two sets of doors I’d passed through. Suddenly
I’m all there is of me. Drawn into

these prints, and out of my time, there’s only
birds now. A heron among the reeds

stands on one leg, her head settled
on a plump breast as if she feigned

sleep. She’s deep inside a world
that could not be without her. A shallow

stream pools around her, a crescent
moon rising through the reeds.

Ripples stilled around her leg
won’t tell the water’s secrets, but I

suspect she knows already. She’s alert
to a world that leads her into the mystery

of herself. Much has fallen away;
silence, a lucidity I can’t leave.

In light so dull, I see the edges
of myself dissolve, her stillness my own.

e less of her the more she is.
Outside, a moon over Tokyo.