April Poetry Month – “What is it” (Thinking of Japan)
Last year, during National Poetry Month, I posted, more or less, a new draft poem each day. I really wasn’t sure I was up for that this year, but this morning, the scent of April called up some urge, and so I wrote the draft poem below.
It is a wonderful thing to have an incentive to think about and write poetry. I don’t know if I can keep it up for the whole month, but I urge you all to consider trying it (at least for a few days!) The poems I will post will, by and large, be drafts so please feel free to write comments and suggestions.
What is it
What is it that allows
the deeply suffering to feel
gratitude, that permits
the young man in Japan
on finding, after weeks, the remains of
his mother and sister, now delicately swaddled
in muddy blankets, to say
“I am so happy.”
Like the curve of breast or
hip that rises gently above
bone, softening the contours of a body evolved
to stand up on two legs, like swallowing
and swallowing again, and the relief in that,
to the caught, parched throat.
As always, all rights reserved. As always, comment! Suggest! And, if you like the work, please please please check out my poetry book, Going on Somewhere, poems by Karin Gustafson, illustrations by Diana Barco, and cover by Jason Martin on Amazon.
Explore posts in the same categories: poetryTags: April National Poetry Month, draft poem, Karin Gustafson, Karin Gustafson poetry, manicddaily, Poem about gratitude during suffering, poem about Japan, stitching of Mount Fujiama
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ManicDDaily 
April 2, 2011 at 7:28 pm
Thrilled that so many people are writing! I was inspired by the Scribbling Women Tour and Sei, and Ashley (of Ink and Trees) and I are writing a list a day on our blogs.
I’ll be keeping up with yours as well. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I love your header. I have an unabashed love for owls and elephants.
April 3, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Dear Jennifer, thanks for following. I think your list idea is great, and the lists so far are lovely. The elephants are from a children’s counting book that I wrote and illustrated called 1 Mississippi. Thanks again, K.
March 13, 2013 at 1:38 pm
Wow….a draft, definitely, only because it is too short! It reels you in, with the beginning, very dramatic, and then?? the flow is almost stopped. It is effective, yes, but it also could be drawn, spun out a bit more…to reinforce the beginning? The suffering and the gratitude, something almost alien to us as a nation.
And then that transcendence you hint at. It’s not a zen or shinto belief, but an influence, surely. The gratitude that must come from a different place in the heart. Overwhelmed by small miracles?
Truly, you have tapped into a dynamic of the Japanese psyche here in the beginning. I wanted a few more examples because that would underlie the solidity….or now, the bitter silence….of the Japanese people as they face two years outward of this tragic event.
Very good, K. and at a certain level….is complete.
Lady Nyo
March 13, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Ha. Well, thanks so much. I just remembered it because of your post. Maybe it should actually be shorter – I don’t know – focus on the young man. It was such a tragic example of that kind of nobility.
Or maybe the end example is too prosaic. Anyway, that type of grace through suffering is certainly a worthy subject. Thanks so much, Jane. k.
March 13, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Or maybe the ticket is emphasizing the hardness of bone in some way – the idea of the softness above that skeletal frame. I will think about it. Thanks.