to be hearing cicadas
here where it’s cold
and so there are none
of thing that’s always happened
when the light travels north
and the birches go along
like when a room from
a dream on a trip
is the same room that you
come home and move into
there’s a drawing of
an encapsuled child
crouched inside a crystal
that’s not especially big
as if in dreams
dreamed not by people
animals or birds
but by insects perhaps
perhaps by the traveller
himself who is looking
away from himself for a while
and is spread in the birches’ haze
perhaps by a child who earnestly
examines a lake in the forest
and finds that the soul might well
have been dreamed by cicadas
it happens sometimes
when the snow melts
that all it has hidden
comes out so the soul can be seen
as when death doesn’t really
become visible until
somebody looks at the gift
that the dead person took to the grave
I think it must look like
the tarnished metal box
I’ve known for a long time
I’m carrying with me
it doesn’t contain
any more than a coin
a tooth, a silver thimble
and a little empty bottle
but its scent when
it’s opened
fills everything
like midnight sun
being able to imagine:
a space of clear crystal
around the deathbed
where the dead person first
really looks like himself
by dying away from the others