Serenade

The female fruit fly cannot sing
but she can recognise
the warm vibrato
of a mate:

a serenade
not issued from the tongue -
but from the high pitched trill
of hidden wings;

if clipped
he grows invisible
to her. They can collide a thousand times
inside this glassy chamber,

but caught
in unnatural silence
she is insensible,
and bears no fruit.

Pearl Diver

"Young women today don't like the sea as much as we do, they lack courage
and don't want to get their skin darkened by working in the water", Kotoyo Motohashi, Pearl Diver, or ‘Ama’.

Upturned
fishing boats -
cormorants
dry their wings.

An empty tub
for abalone,
cuttlefish,
or octopus
settles on the woodblock waves.

One long breath
and Kotoyo descends,
like her mother
and her grandmother
before her.

Currents stir the kelp;
water murkens:
Kotoyo
can barely see her hands -

or the knife
that separates
sea-bed from oyster shell.
She is last of the Ama
of Shirahama.

Mermaid

caught alive
just off the Shetland Isles,
two feet in length
and finned along the spine;
her tiny hands
are webbed,
the lower portion
of her breast
scales into
a slippery tail.
Only her voice
escaped.

Kamasutra (the subsidiary arts)

To make designs
on courtyard floors
with ricepowder and sand
is seventh of the sixty four
arts to hold desire.
Cutting patterns
out of leaves
is number five.
Forty-third
teaching minah birds
and parrots how to talk.
And if you master repartee,
sign language, foreign tongues,
and practice all these arts of love -
there's no room left
for emptiness,
no time
for broken hearts.