1.
When Hiroshige turns the frame vertical
throughout One Hundred Famous Views of Edo,
his last great sequence of wood-block prints,
it is perhaps a nod toward photography—
he had seen some early examples,
tip of the western technological dagger—
though it also suggests a window, and so
makes the viewer complicit. And then
he deepens that dialogue by obscuring
or complicating the depicted landscape
with unusual angles of perspective
and wry compositional permutations:
there is a cinematic sense of depth
and motion to the images, varied as they are,
and the frame enters into the composition
as the delineating horizon of a door,
a pleasure boat, a temple or palanquin,
with, sometimes, an implied observer
having just left the scene—ink brush
set down hastily, blue robe on the floor,
a single hairpin removed from its pouch
in the courtesan’s chamber. Sometimes
that observer is present at the margins
as an elbow or a shadow, as a horse, a cat,
wind-blown cuckoos. In my favorite
a turtle, bound and trussed and hung
from a cord, cranes its neck to look out
from the Mannen Bridge across meadows
and salt marshes full of fishermen
and white-sailed boats toward the distant city
and Mount Fuji on the far horizon.
I had assumed, studying it, that this turtle
had been trapped for sale as a food item—
the Japanese must like turtle soup?—
but have since discovered something
entirely marvelous: captive turtles
were sold to travelers not to be eaten,
but to be released back into the marsh,
as karmic offerings….
2.
Taken away from Hiroshige by the doorbell:
a guy wanting to cut down my coconuts
and cart them away for coco frio.
Throughout Miami you can buy a cold coconut
to drink from the shell for a buck or two,
and this is my contribution to the local trade.
This man has a withered left hand—
the dexterity of cutting and catching
the coconuts as they fall already impressive,
how much more so with his disability.
In Miami Spanglish he calls me boss,
and I say, Hay un otra árbol más grande atrás,
my Spanish even worse than his poor English,
showing him the giant tree laden with dozens
of fat coconuts in the backyard, and he says
¡cocos tremendos! vowing to come back tomorrow
with a bigger ladder. I wonder if he will.
The same guys do not always return, season
after season, despite my eagerness to donate.
Only the newest arrivals work this job,
fresh from Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Honduras,
and with luck a year is enough to climb a rung
upon that larger, metaphorical ladder.
These interactions with the coco frio guys
are always a highlight of my year. Why?
I suppose the sociological aspect is part of it,
grassroots American dreaming—but also
I have planted these coconut palms myself,
planted them as fishtailed shoots just sprouted
from the husk and now they are enormous
trees cascading coconuts across the yard,
so sending forth this crop, however humble,
is as close as I will ever get to being a farmer.
This is my pastoral. If I were Horace,
this would be an Ode. I mean Neruda. I mean,
if I were Virgil this would be an eclogue.