I spent quite a bit of time listening to the very competent and varied work of Duckett (what a prolific artist!) and musing on the theme of Transitions before finally mixing a pastiche of his work and combining two of my previously-published poems about Spring coming to a city in Japan.
Thanks Duckett for providing such finessed mixes with which to work. I also added a bit of my own shakuhachi to give it a Japanese flavor. Please excuse my indulgence.


A city transformed.


the city becomes a painting

spring is in the walk of commuters.

dead faces awaken from a winter sleep (atatakai !)

strangers discuss the advance of the bloom
as the pink complexioned Sakura Front
advances over a country’s winter face

streets are dappled with the small-change of sun,
filtered through blossom and budding leaves,
coins of light.

the city is a wedding littered
with spent-petal confetti

daubs of the palest pink flurried
into piles in corners and depressions

highlighting the dullest bitumen
with the slightest embarrassment
on a rice-powdered cheek

a city transformed
from stark realist
to pointillist
impression

ashita. tomorrow.

my uni coworker tells me all this beauty makes us think of death.
and rebirth. the blossom’s beauty all the more valuable
because it is delicate & ephemeral. soon all this will

be gone she says with a sweep of arm. like us.
nothing lasts forever. we must appreciate each day.
perhaps there will be no tomorrow. And she is

almost right. the next day it rains and i watch
browning pink petals in runnels washed
down concrete drains. I think of

tsunamis. beauty.
the brevity
of life.

Rob Walker

The city becomes a painting was first published in Transnational Literature (November, 2012)
Vol. 5 No. 1
Flinders Institute for Research in the Humanities
ISSN 1836-4845
http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au...

ashita/ tomorrow appeared in a later volume of the same publication:
(Nov, 2013)
Vol. 6 No. 1
Flinders Institute for Research in the Humanities
ISSN 1836-4845
http://dspace.flinders.edu....