Challenging Poetry

Japan: under the shadow

a child born
under the shadow of Fuji
where the land quakes
and the sea throws his anger
against the shore,
where kitsune wave nine tailed
salutes as they disappear
into the underbrush,
leaving chaos in their wake—
that child will grow
surrounded by ancient
ancestors—grandparents
and grandparent’s grandparents,
filling the air with wisdom
and industry,
and progress,
and expectation—
until the air is so thick with it.
too many children choose to die
under that weight,
leaving only a few
to grow old and wise
in the shadow of a perfect mountain.

Author's Note ▶︎

There were two things that really stood out to me in my research into Japan. First that this population is the oldest in the world. Right now, a quarter of the population is older. Fewer children are being born, and those that do have a reasonable expectation of living into their eighties. Second, that the suicide rate among the under thirty population is inordinately high. Those two facts prompted the poem.