Robert K. Omura

Robert K. Omura

Failing to Find the Words on an October Day

I don’t remember birds singing, tori no uta or the hum of power lines overhead

or if the leaves had fled the trees yet— but mornings left a thin veneer on glass

and a mist underscored every word puffed from my lips, so I conserved

them to keep them real in a world that borrowed and overtaxed them.

I spent the day keeping them down like wrestling finches that longed for sky

held them close to my chest, under my breath, so they had nowhere to go.

I struggled to leave them to drive to our appointment, but I went straight over.

The smell of car fumes, turn after turn, burned my eyes red, but I had no words

low sun made it hard to read depth, washed out color, but I still had no words.

I remember how you loved fresh flowers, laughed at my silly jokes, okaasan

how you left a voicemail reminder for me to pick up on my birthday

how your eyes brightened, you smiled, when I came to visit during covid.

Masked up, I signed for you, walked in, head bowed, silent as a monk come to pray.

You seemed fragile as porcelain asleep beneath a white sheet, dreaming of your garden

I said, goodbye, I miss you, because words failed to express ōkina kanashimi.

Robert K. Omura

On the Occasion of the Return to Her Childhood Home

We disembarked not as pilgrims but hens, the bouldered shore barnacled, the unbridled ferry frothing in its berth, wreaths of white orchids rising from the water, light sparks electric across the cove, flashing anagrams.

An anarchy of angry gulls demurred the out-tiding cars, as if loud voices ever drown a wave, broken pavement blistered, tired at the edges no one cared, they rolled right over it.

Seven years sobriety made her skin itch, brought clarity without peace. Still she laughed freely, shoulders loosen at the joint, opening to let out a sigh.

Though away from the island half her life the trails from a child’s wet feet crisscrossing her palm, wider, but still the same.

Evening tide foamed two full anklets brought tiny crabs out from hiding under stones, red blossoms spread, then dissolved, in tidal pools uncovering the gold lockets in the sunset.

We held onto them with both hands. We held onto them like they were real.

We held onto the buffeted shores for a week, excavating tiny bones from the anthracite with a trowel and a fine white brush.

Under the fortuitous fronds of an old cedar tree, she found a cat’s eye marble. With the rhythm of cricket song a lullaby for the ear, we lay on the cold ground, looked up,

watched Perseids rain down from a cloudless sky.

Some things lost can be found; some things lost are gone forever.

We refused to make promises— promises are delicate things, soft as eggshells, fragile as dragonfly wings, held together by the hope they might hatch one day.

Robert K. Omura

Curled in the Arms of a Sleeping Dragon, We

The Venice night, a cross wind, her hair limp, the dampness in the air; everything here is small, and the walls angular and hard as her smile.

Those browns and reds and the window boxes green as algae-stains along the banks of the canal and the town, the curled tail of a sleeping dragon.

Porcelain masks filled shop windows, and I thought, why, when the human face, with forty-three muscles, could hide an elephant behind 10,000 expressions.

Neglect had left scars on the façade where the plaster fell away, and I reached out, clasped her hand in mine but she pulled away and strolled a little ahead.

It is said that before the bones of St. Mark were secreted out of Egypt and sealed in a box in the Basilica, St. Theodore, the dragon-slayer, was patron saint.

There are no straight lines here, no easy routes nothing is direct, not even the language. So, we strolled down the alleys to find our way.

I’m trying to remember if she wore a smile with her green jacket and if it made a difference and how the empty square let the voices fall

and I’m trying to understand if speaking those words and if reaching out could somehow close the gap or if too much distance had grown between us

and I’m trying to find answers in a field of gold stars searching for a flicker of truth in the faces of the saints but San Marco is as impotent as a eunuch tonight.

We two sleeping dragons, coiled in opposition, wait for St. Theodore’s return; stuck in the past, we, until everything, all that’s built, succumbs to the sea.