And Afterwards

Let us travel south along the spine
of Honshu, crossing at Shimonoseki

into Kyushu, where the August sun
makes no apologies for its heat

and the rice paddies decline in neat
terraces from the wooded mountains

down to the sea, where a fisherman
waits in his boat for us, his old eyes

crinkled with something like laughter,
while waves wash against the hull

like water in a warm bath stirred
by a mother’s firm but gentle hand.

DAVID STARKEY

David Starkey is publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press. He served as Santa Barbara, California’s 2009–2011 Poet Laureate and is Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program and Emeritus Professor at Santa Barbara City College. His most recent books of poetry are You, Caravaggio and The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light. (davidstarkey.net)