jumper cables

feathers glistening crows watch us from their premium seats
cawing and rocking their amusement
heckling the fumbles of our human performance




The dead battery in a friend's car (the nongmobile!) prompted this stone. But I must admit the crows in Miyazaki are a bit scary. We caught one at the beach going through a girl's bag while she and her boyfriend were distracted just a few feet away on the sand. It had removed pretty much everything including her wallet. The kites at that beach are equally dangerous and famous for stealing the sandwich out of your hand as you attempt to put it in your mouth. No eating and walking at Aoshima if you value your hands and face.

already longing...

Still January

the plants on the window sill
are dull
their pale leaves
despair
the wan winter light

seashells
lie there too
hard, round circles of
hope
and sweet memory
of a far away season

Can it just stop being winter already?
I have chilblains on two of my toes. It is my fault that I do, I know. Someone stole my good, winter hiking shoes off my front porch--sheesh! Seriously! And I have been hiking for the past two weeks wearing winter socks with summer shoes. Bad Julia. So, the toes are angry. Never fear though, relief is coming. I got a new pair of Keen boots--oh beauty in brown and tan. They are wide and warm and will protect my poor little piggies. And from years of chilblains in this blasted country (which has such issues with denial about how cold it actually is in Winter and what measures should be taken to insure that houses are not the same temp as the out of doors). It is highly unlikely that anyone who reads this will ever need to know this, but OTC sore muscle rub (like Ben Gay) works wonders. Thought I'd share.

Rip Van Winkle Afternoon

yellow light dapples the trees
its warmth
full of falsehoods
lulls us
so we linger
on the meadow's moss carpet
a little too long

shadows spring up from the ground
catching us
chasing us
off the mountain

forcing us
back to the cold truth
of January's calendar


We have been hiking again. I don't care if people think "that's all you do".
It is a cheap, healthy way to spend a winter day. I miss the ocean and being able to snorkel or ride our SUP. But I am all for "make hay while the sun shines" and as this place is full of mountains and we are fit enough to walk in them, so we hike. We tried out a new peak today. It was a (another) ridge climb through a swath of natural forest. It was pretty, but also depressing. Depressing because most of it was a silent, almost dead forest. It was full of trees, yes, and there were a few birds here and there, but there are no animals--no squirrels, no mice or foxes or other little creatures to look forward to. There are wild boars. The startle and scare us occasionally, but we usually don't see them, only know they exist because of all the tilling they do along the trails. There are also wild monkeys. They live in pockets around the gorge south of our city and it is always fun to hear them and see them when we walk. I am so used to seeing rabbits and chipmunks or squirrels when I walked in the States that it is a bit disappointing to not be able to see them here.