Kintsugi II

Barometer
Castle Hill--Crane Estate

Kintsugi II

For Pete Sheehan, my friend

And when two people have loved each other

see how it is like a

scar between their bodies,

stronger, darker, and proud;

how the black chord makes of them a single fabric

that nothing can tear or mend.

                                                                Jane Hirshfield

                                                                For What Binds Us

Hibakusha means survivor

                in Japanese

survivors of a small but growing
larger ball falling above

their heads to make of them

ash and lit shreds, irradiated

shadows—and although it didn’t come for them

specifically

if they stood it or even ran

a little ways from it

they cracked anyway, and openly most

went down blind from the flash and if not that

something  intimate was cast

in their veins, something elemental

and they waited years

to see it,

bending once again in their lives

to the trees, to the stones, to any lonely

or cold or maybe none of those

if they’d come far enough,

to acknowledge the god

in all things.  How broken they are made

                (if they can bring themselves

                to believe)

and how entirely

useful and beautiful
even now.

Yesterday the body

of my old friend

went into the flames.  Beneath his skin,

I’d like to believe,

the veins surrounding his heart

may have resembled

in some way

those pieces

that were far enough from the bomb

to maybe suffer only a crack.
Imagine the flawless

Samurai tea bowls

a shogun was said to, how long ago?

hold to his lip before going out to die

slow to no one.

And the gold they bonded

in the dust and vein became

(listen, it’s in the flames

now, like Peter’s heart, and those hands

and hair, all of those, don’t you want

to know?  I know I do—the name

of the monk who went

from village to village after the war

to repair entire tea sets

and all else that was tendered

to him,

the monk who brought his own

gold

who bowed low                —domo—

and spread out the fire before him

to transform ever crack

every full on break

(and even, if a piece was missing

from the lip

of itself or a chip)

from the Buddha’s own bowl

                or he said this

                and they believed

                because that especially,

                after he recovered it, when he blew it cool

                when he prepared the tea

                and poured the hot water

                into it and it steamed up clean

                it met their scars and flashed

                on them, it beaded on them

                and they breathed in

                and even on the inside

                especially on the inside—

                the steam

                the tea

                                the last breathing...

               

                Pete, softening

                                into smoke

               

                we – open in us – the vein

                                                once his own signature –

                                                                runs through us – it pulses,

                charged.