[Modern Tanka Classics] A Forest of Stars and Seeds of Play

The character for 'star' (星) combines 'crystal' (晶), representing light scattered in the night sky, with 'life' (生), signifying the birth of life.

The character for 'forest' (林) comes from the noun form 'hayashi', derived from the verb 'hayasu' (to grow).

According to the 'Shuowen Jiezi', the oldest Chinese dictionary, 'forest' (林) refers to trees clustered on flat land and is a noun-based character.

'New Edition: The Study of Kanji - The World of the Shuowen Jiezi' by Tetsuji Atsuji

It is said to point to a place where things or companions are gathered together.

The forests depicted in the Manyoshu are rich in variety.

'Basic Knowledge of the Manyoshu' (Kadokawa Sensho), edited by Makoto Ueno, Masahiro Tetsuno, and Ufumi Murata

There are 'bamboo forests,' 'tachibana (an old name for mandarin orange) forests,' and even 'winter forests' where whirlwinds blow.

Furthermore, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro composed a poem like this:

In the sea of heaven, clouds rise in waves; the moon's boat is seen rowing and hiding in the forest of stars.

(Clouds rise in waves in the vast sea of heaven. The moon's boat crosses over them and hides in the forest of stars.)

(Waves of clouds rise in the sea of the sky, and one can see the moon's boat traveling through the sky and entering the forest of stars.)

Clouds as waves.

The moon as a boat.

And, I am simply amazed by the sensibility that likens the clustered stars to a forest on such a magnificent scale.

The Manyoshu contains such sci-fi fantasy-like poems, and the image of Hitomaro gazing at the night sky under the starlit night comes to mind, allowing us to enjoy the view of the starry sky.

In the starry sky, there is more than just a forest of stars.

There are scattered stars, fine as bran.

There are brilliant, shining stars.

There are many constellations likened to mythological gods, animals, and vessels.

Such stars and constellations can also be seen in great numbers.

The 'star dwellings' that appear in the star poems of Fujiwara no Teika (from 'Shui Guso') liken the nobility (the imperial family) to stars, but

'Looking at the Emperor's universal reign in the sky, the shadows of the star dwellings remain motionless.'

'The countless ages of cloudless skies appear, and light shines upon the star dwellings.'

They also hold the meaning of star alignments and constellations.

Stars, no two of which have the same shape.

People, no two of whom have the same shape.

Stars, each with different colors, shapes, and sizes, illuminating the heavens and the sea.

People, each with different colors, shapes, and sizes, becoming a grove, a forest, illuminating the earth.

Even if not everything is visible to the eye, 'Yugen' is what can be vaguely felt, and it is people who see infinite beauty within the finite (Yugen).

'It should be an emotional resonance not expressed in words, a scenery not visible in form.' (From Kamo no Chomei's 'Mumyosho')

'Looking out, there are no flowers or autumn leaves; a hut on the shore in the autumn twilight.' (From Fujiwara no Teika's 'Shin Kokin Wakashu', Autumn Part 1, 363)

'People of the world seek flowers in the mountains and forests over there, wondering when they will bloom, from dawn until dusk, not knowing that those flowers and autumn leaves are within their own hearts. They only enjoy the colors visible to the eye.' (From Sen no Rikyu's 'Nanporoku')

"If you hide it, it is a flower. If you do not hide it, it cannot be a flower."(From Zeami's 'Fūshikaden')

"The Philosophy of 'Kanashimi' (Sorrow): Exploring the Origins of Japanese Spiritual History" (NHK Books) by Seiichi Takeuchi

Playing in such a world.

The word for play, 'asobu,' was written with the character for 'enjoy' (tanoshimu) and is said to have originated from 'ashii' (spirit-walking), referring to walking to the place of a god who helps people, in order to worship.

Originally, play was meant to entertain gods and spirits, after all.

Kagura, which uses musical instruments, songs, and dances, represents this.

Yes, people in the past used to say that a child's job is to play.

Small seeds dwelling within the small hearts and bodies of children.

Nurtured through play, they eventually bloom into their own respective flowers.

Since long ago, play for Japanese children has always been accompanied by songs.

Hand games like 'Cha-Chatsubo,' 'Zui Zui Zukkorobashi,' and 'Musunde Hiraite'.

Tag games like 'Kagome Kagome' and 'Abukutatta, Nietatta'.

Jump rope songs like 'Oonami Konami' and 'Ojosan, Ohainnasai'.

There are also ball-bouncing songs, rock-paper-scissors play songs, and so on.

If adults also play happily, following the example of children's nursery rhymes, and awaken the seeds that have been sleeping, perhaps beautiful flowers will bloom.

Thank you for your hard work in these busy days (bow) ( ͜☕ ･ω･) ͜☕ Please have some coffee 🎵

Why not try blooming yourself while singing a song during your cafe time at home once in a while? (^^)

[Contemporary Tanka Classics]

"Apple Penetration Ceremony" (Contemporary Tanka Classics 01) by Yuko Iida

[From the included poems]
Aren't they all empty? A suspicious person cannot become an egg seller.

Plucking every other flight feather of a canary, it is the anniversary of Mrs. O.J. Simpson's death.

The nurse's kagome-kagome (sigh) (sigh) (you have) (a pitiful power, don't you)

Select all, save as, I stood on my knees and held K's head.

Help me, split-end sister, help me, Nishikawa blanket tag, help me, face I stroke in the middle of the night.

I might be a fake, my urination is sharp and long, striking the porcelain.

Arms pressing down appear one after another, a dream of being the horse in leapfrog forever.

Last will and testament, a jellyfish allergy certificate blown away by the first storm of spring.

Because the summer sky clouds over so easily, I tickle my little brother until he wakes up.

Buried in a sphere, the river surface, I hate it, it keeps flowing, I hate it.

I try spreading golden jam thoroughly until the burnt toast shines.

If I mix mustard into the rape blossoms, I deeply want to hear the true feelings of Hyuma's sister.

The day only girls were gathered, holding our knees like a parachute unit.

Purely, I hook my fingers into the kangaroo pocket, ah, there is a body under the clothes.

It is a garbage-smelling morning on Lily of the Valley Street, we are not twins.

Grabbing your ankles and making you crawl, I will teach you how the stars perish.

I hate, I hate the women's restroom sign, I am strong, I am strong at fighting.

"Classroom Where Sand Falls" (Contemporary Tanka Classics 02) by Minami Ishikawa

[From the included poems]
Regretting that there is nothing else to say but "a field of rapeseed blossoms," I stand among the rapeseed blossoms.

Called "the kind of guy who orders curry when he's angry," I find myself pouting again.

For the sorrow that will eventually come, I hold a dark drawing board in front of my chest.

The lace curtains are cold, and my younger brother sneezes, "Habsburg," in the autumn.

The giggle-giggle-giggle-giggle tree sways, hiding the blue sky, a solitary camphor tree.

On an afternoon when the southern wind approaches with a hiss, I won't cry just by looking at willow buds.

Cooling my neck with Sprite, insisting over and over that I don't have a crush on anyone.

The dark staircase of the club building, as if a precious corpse were hidden there.

On a night of unbearable loneliness, I can hear the snoring of the moles from the whack-a-mole game.

I don't know what happened, but the pine mushroom was sulking, its cap closed tight.

My older brother, who only smiles, is earnest, sincere, and bad at saying goodbye.

My sibling cries bitterly and runs back; waking from the dream, the back of my teeth aches.

Milk, milk, wanting to grow up fast, I open my mouth in the corner of the galaxy.

We must play at full speed; the hourglass is faintly ringing.

Was it me? The one who finally pulled the string that hung down thinly from the heavens.

Rumors gather in the shade, chillingly saying, "The florist hates the smell of lilies."

There is an alley where the remains of petals pile up, and I enter a small, old bookstore at midday.

Bathing in the school bell on my back, I came running through the hallway damp with the smell of freeze-dried tofu.

An edamame bean pops out, and today, on summer vacation, I walk without choosing the shade.

Taking flight without a running start, like a single piece of laundry; I want to tell you.

A keyboard instrument as quiet as an afternoon spent neither loving nor being loved

Even though all the windows have grown this dark, Emil is still in the garden

Not invited to the mushrooms' moon-viewing banquet, as one who carries a faint poison

Gargling in midsummer, like a love poem written without really being in love with anyone

Knocking on the door of the professor's room, where the sound of gnawing on grammar books can be heard

The braggart reishi mushroom claims it taught the lost Kenji the way

One hundred umbrellas placed in front of the shop in preparation for the afternoon when a sudden shower attacks the world

A pear blossom branch carrying the spring rain; there was the name of someone I slowly forgot

Hearing that the neighbor's persimmons often eat guests, everyone goes out in a line to see

Seeing someone walking with their lover, the color of the sky seeps into me, creakingly

Taking six coats to the dry cleaner, it must be becoming spring

"April Fish" (Modern Tanka Classics 03) by Yutaka Masaoka

[From the included poems]
The slope of the dream I once visited; to your house, where you pretend to be distant

I hold you dear, so I love everything, including the beauty of your teeth alignment

For the sake of what you cannot accomplish in this world, there is a boat burning gently

Mars burns above the dry cleaner's; I could see my mother's sleep in the distance

The day after a holiday spent familiarizing myself with kanji containing the fish radical, I saw you in town

Think of the final defense that just won't be broken as a summer the color of salt

The color of the passing scenery; I am just dreaming your dream

My morning sun reflects in the water soaking the flannel filter; P.K. Dick memorial day

The music that deceives our days, which seem to be waiting for something vaguely

Showing the underside of its light blue wings, not thinking it would be plucked away

The owl that can no longer sit still, that one is going to say goodbye

I pray without a destination, I run, in a morning all alone

The day after a holiday spent getting familiar with kanji containing the fish radical, I saw you in town

Making the beetle drag this sadness along, a summer dawn where I only smile

Pushing against the water's edge where we live our lives, a swarm of sea fireflies that never stop rustling

The celestial image is my lunar globe floating in the void of withered grass in the cooling autumn

If you ask the wind, the wind answers: keep the promise, far-off Wright brothers

When all the dreams have returned to the south, oh, winter wings that blink

Lines intersecting at the point at infinity, and there, quietly, is your blink

Living the rose and its season, standing together at the water's edge of time that perishes

"Until the World is Covered by the Sea" (Modern Tanka Classics 04) by Yumio Sato

[From the included poems]
"There is a reality called a dream," says the voice of an owl, Jorge Luis Borges

Looking timidly at the gas tank, the green voice of a friend, da, ru, ma, san, ga,

Using the steam from coffee as a signal fire, the star-person's Nishi-Ogikubo is west of Ogikubo

The shape of a transparent heel, even the sky wants to try stepping on the yellow of the ginkgo leaves

A sign of cosmic dust falling thinly on the green lines of the report paper

The rhinoceros comes like a leather-bound book and says, "Be human"

At the milk stand on an autumn day, fathers all return, standing the light of empty bottles upright

Oh, Moso bamboo of October, is that so? Is the sky really that cold?

A white chair left by the poolside, becoming a refreshing bone in the dead of winter.

A wind chime shop that keeps ringing its chimes, until the world is covered by the sea.

"Thursday" (Modern Tanka Classics 05) by Shiho Morita

【From the included poems】
"Summer is painful," I run off holding an album review that says just that.

One morning, I want to return to the sea with everyone, taking the train caught in the net.

We are two people who get along on the point that we will die someday, going to the mountains with a Baumkuchen.

Sadness is one for each person, a shaved ice, lightning strikes just as I finish eating it.

Everything you wear on your body belongs to this world. The north wind wins.

The brightness of the twilight soaking in; the countryside means transparency.

Yes, breathe in, hold it. April, when the shadows in my heart are taken by the spring thunder of the white coat.

Hiragana is a rare language that floats in the air and stands still.

The moment the helicopter kisses the sea, I am the dizzying pilot.

We laugh even when chopsticks fall, or rather, it's funny even at the point of the chopsticks, isn't it?

I told you to come pick me up because it was raining, yet you came barefoot without even an umbrella.

When I call the unseen summer by the name of a dog from my memory, it wags its small tail and rings brightly.

If I throw it into my mouth, it unravels; a wonderful question like a sweet remains.

Reaching out to a dream fading on an autumn morning, rain falling on a river of apple peels.

A diagonal pull-up on a spring day, flowers falling on my face saying go on alone from here.

There is no sound in the memories of summer when we laughed together, just a small fish jumping.

The shoji door slides open and my cousins from long ago come sliding in, all at once, into the night.

In a gag manga where no one ever ages, we scatter salt into the sunset and laugh.

While arranging peach branches in a plastic bottle, I find myself wishing I could become human soon.

The season departs, leaving behind the pale blue scars of tracks that know nothing of the abandoned line.

It fell from the sky onto the evening road, and no one can name that bird.

Even the indigo pot wants to wake up someday; this world is the night before a long field trip.

"Slight Fever" (Modern Tanka Classics 06) by Satoshi Chiba

【From the collection】
I hate to admit it, but Ryu's shot is good—a promise to send the light back to the sky.

The sound of waves folding up the baggy darkness soaks into the two of us, and then, morning.

The scars and light that dwell on the wobbly piano music stand are lukewarm liquid.

Drinking Sprite with my head tilted back—the sun, the plastic bottle, and you are all in a line.

The rest hotel has gone out of business, and our base and our heroes have all been erased.

By the time the stars came out, we were holding our balls, watching the sky ripen and joking around.

We embraced like a poem that would vanish tomorrow; summer begins from the fire escape.

"Knock-kneed Knees" (Modern Tanka Classics 07) by Ai Imahashi

【From the collection】
"I came to buy mizuna" / Driving three hours on the highway to this room / mizuna / to buy.

The sex I had with you back when the plot was still invisible is surely a treasure.

Searching for the handrail behind my back / the path I came by is sand / a book I cannot remember.

If I keep staring at the pale purple, perhaps I might become that kind of woman.

I have to believe that my own light is shining from my forehead, or I won't be able to make it here.

Let's go cherry blossom viewing / Just the two of us on a Sunday afternoon / It's already exhausting, isn't it

Before my sense of smell / goes numb / I must insert / a parsley bookmark into my memories

This mouth repeats more than a summer cicada, how ugly I must look to you

When you are there, when you look a little lonely / I close my eyes. Sweet. When you were there

Thank you for finding me among so many women

Cigarettes, nap, bath, castella, darkness, can't sit still, cigarettes, cigarettes

When I grow old and become bones / I wonder if there will be someone / to make me rattle

When I'm lying awake in a cold sweat / The little bird is humble and fragile / Cute

I play gentle music toward the sky when I press the reset button on life

I no longer have to become someone else / Suddenly, my ears are so quiet.

Have you already become something else? / The sun. / Even though it was so dazzling that day

The swaying light purple forgives everything so much

Leave the key / where I can find it / Is this a dream? / I am me / I am yours

We / we / we / we / we / we / I

An apple from my stomach. / Yes, in the shape of an apple. / My shoulder feels like it's coming off / These eyes. They feel like they're coming out

It was kind because I was too used to it. In that room / that same bossa nova as always

With my hands, splash, splash / I want to sprinkle water on my soul / and make it say 'it's cool'

Even if I wave / Even if I say see you later / If I don't see your face next / I want to see your face

It's thick. What is this, an avocado? / Even though you always say you're afraid of things you don't know

*Indicates line breaks with /

"Cold Air Inundation" (Modern Tanka Classics 08) by Matsuo Watanabe

[From the included poems]
Inside the cabbage, no matter where I go, it is cabbage, making me feel dizzy like life itself

A metaphysical cold egg, intently, sits clear on the table, containing the Jambudvipa world

Over the thing that throws itself out as a bridge, the shadow of the clouds on the autumnal equinox passes

The tree feels a tree from a thousand years in the future within itself, it is so ticklish, this spring

The baby swallows a voice like a petal, and goes to see the heavy moon for the first time

Humans are just pimples standing on the earth, the swelling of a fly agaric mushroom

From the waist down of my upright body, I am forever damp in the earth, growing as a tree

Rounding his back, where is Mokichi going? The mammatus clouds are coming, dark and black

The nipples of a man who wants to cry, for being here and there, all alone on the plain

The tree opens, showing the butterfly inside the tree, one after another the trees open, the chests of the trees

"The Sea of That Day" (Modern Tanka Classics 09) by Taro Someno

[From the included poems]
A morning where spring light accompanies the curtains, I saw you brushing your teeth for the first time

Because I pressed my loneliness onto you, you no longer show me the quiet sea

It seems you keep a soaked bird, the chatter of a friend repeating the word "society"

My parents-in-law call me Taro-san, Taro-san, and I have been unable to tell them about my depression for two years

Governed by Paxil, serotonin dances in my brain too, yuaan yuyoon

The lunch break in January ends, and in the classroom, shells like students move slightly

Chestnut-related products appear all at once, an autumn when it is easy for people to die

In the order they gave up on the answers, the students lie on their desks and set sail on a voyage

My youth scolds the student who averted their gaze while suppressing a giggle

I couldn't hear it again today—the voice of a jellyfish lost in the students' whispers

A loneliness burning in my palm; I search for fireworks to light, but search as I might, there is only darkness

Fireflies overflow in the students' brains, making the entrance exam classroom warm

It feels like tracing a proto-language; when I talk to students, I want to know what they are ashamed of

If it reaches the alveoli, will the chalk dust eventually take root, whiter than snow?

After a PE class where I shouted in a classroom like a sea that cannot reflect the white sun

"Windows, and Others" (Modern Tanka Classics 10) by Shota Uchiyama

【From the included poems】
In the white light returned by the Google screen when I search for "I'm tired"

I feed the cockatiel last night, which has eyes like pathetic stickers

The days I will cry someday appear scattered, like the city lights hidden between the trees

The linen room on the wall of the dim corridor; truly, the sleep of the fabric is quiet

Growing old beautifully and uglily, I think, is just a matter of the angle at which the light hits

The mystery of having sadness in the Netherlands; a Ferris wheel turns beyond the rain

Feeling the night breeze touch the nape of my neck, I deeply pity the cool flesh as a human

On a night listening to a chorale, it opens naturally; the chorale overflowed from my fingers

As loneliness and cold gather in my fingers, I loosen the chrysanthemums and loosen the camellias

Receiving each drifting flower one by one, the river is quiet and sick with water

Reflecting the dandelion riverbank in my chest, I open my quiet room at night

The lily in the night entryway is a muscle, opening until the buds unfold and turn inside out

Tofu, fried tofu, konjac, shirataki, drifting in the department store of a summer night's dream

The mortar wall visible through the hole in the donut is overflowing with tears

In my room at noon with nothing to do, I exist like a mirror

The day I become a human Pooh is near, reaching my hands toward the fire, lost in thought

In the Joseph story, Joseph is depicted with the distortion of a human face faithfully rendered

Dragging a long shadow, the old person continues to encounter the afternoon sunlight

The option of becoming a chick sexer flashes, and I walk along the night highway thinking about it

The chains of the swing are cold and taut, the core of winter is metal

I want to distance myself from myself; the edge of the night, the purity of the Joban Line window

If I keep staring at the color of the sea, which is like soft clay, I feel dizzy

A heart that revives, the fleeting moment as traffic lights pass beautifully by the train window

The kindergarten that remained in my heart has flowed out into the scent of a candle

Looking back on the year, I am soon gazing at the alleyways spreading in my mouth

The living body, having removed the shadow from the shadow picture, faces the paper filled with light

While having a heart like a shucked shellfish, the disappearance while holding an umbrella is beautiful

Having a Kannon carved on my back, the sorrow of girlhood peacefully exceeds my stature

The Ferris wheel, being dismantled by the wind, like or dislike, spring grass

Returning home is exposing a dark back; the backs of others going in groups

On the beach at noon, while despising my black hand in the backlight more than usual

When Friday night comes, I chuckle, a sleep where my outlines soon begin to melt

A canker sore does not open at night; I turn back my lips in the mirror of early autumn.

I want to step on the red of the traffic light reflected on the road surface on a rainy night, so I step on it.

As I wave my hand at the petals blown high up, life still feels cold.

Beyond the fourth-floor window, the fluff of an old man's presence floats, shining.

Inside the light of the vending machine, cigarettes are lined up beautifully, beyond compare.

I drop a letter into the mailbox and start walking, along the way home that is still barely bright.

Standing on the last train with my eyes closed, I see a vision of a hibiscus hair ornament.

The surface of the pond, swaying after the boat has passed, is it not the face of a sleeping person?

Sitting on a bench on a spring day, I watch the pigeon walk around me using the strength of its neck.

The xiaolongbao, more fragile than paper, appeared in my dream on a cold night.

I am eating potato chips with the bag slightly open; before long, salt has settled on the back of my hand.

A human hair has stuck to the slime of a peach dropped on the floor, and the afternoon has passed.

If you believe, you will eventually lose it; white plum blossoms in the cold light of a single day.

I saw the gentleness of people swaying in the human world through a thin film of tears.

Life is a string of empty words; I watch until the falling snow settles and sinks.

Though it is a depth of murkiness, I immerse my heart in the mass at the fourth-floor office building.

Even though it is daytime, in one corner of the dim room, there is a window as if encountering a spring.

The speed of the passing train's windows makes the flow of personalities melt together; I see a long window.

A child's voice says there is a white night inside the railway, coming from my own throat.

An overpass being covered in winter light; I want to return to someone's palm.

I sink my body deep into the bathtub; this body of mine will never go to Khabarovsk.

Letting my alveoli know deep down that the wisteria flowers carry the scent of Japanese sweets.

In an alleyway on a cloudy day, a camellia is left behind, perhaps a remnant of a game of house.

The horse and the roof rotate together as one; the mechanism of it fills my chest.

In the moment when thin paper clings to water, which dead soul is it that detaches from its flesh?

Late autumn; as I shower, I hear the cool phantom sound of a pencil rolling away.

With the gaze of my later years, I watch the pigeons on the windless platform.

The red spider lilies bloom on this shore, and the wind is a slender bridge of days.

Clinging, clinging to work like a piece of cloth, I speak of the ecstasy of letting go.

In my room, where the sound of the gospel does not reach, there is morning bread, soaked in light.

From closed windows and closed eyelids, tears spill out like a magic trick.

Rain pours onto the paved road, and a glove lies there, flat like the carcass of a bird.

The withered blossoms of the Lady Banks' rose pile up on the branches, and I approach another's fence, wanting to touch them.

I close my eyes and come to the riverbank, then open them to touch the IV drip of rapeseed blossoms.

The night water flows, and that is a mouse; a mouse that existed smoothly for two seconds.

Light bursts in the amusement park, and the nostalgic acid of my heart flows out, and there I am.

Oh, the childish darkness of twilight, how people gather like the rustling of baby's breath.

The presence of twilight spreads, a clarity at five in the afternoon, separated by a wide window.

On the overpass, there is a patch of dried vomit, a white that accompanies the white days.

The windows of houses seen from the train, the dining tables of others are so incredibly clear.

"Green Shrine" (Modern Tanka Classics 11) by Satoshi Goto

[From the included poems]
All the cloudy days gather here, I wait with oven mitts on both hands

The gondola goes over the green valley, the origin of joy and anxiety is the same

I must remember the notebook that I repaired with Scotch tape, I think

After reading a good novel at Denny's, I cross the bridge alone in the twilight

A washing machine is spinning somewhere far away, the sadness of never having seen a skylark

It was beautiful from the start, even the popcorn that spilled from these hands

In early summer, I make it a point to return the gaze of everything I see

A soldier repairing a radio, trying to find a heroine within the words

A wide meadow appeared in the music video, and I wanted to go there

The muzzle of a finger pointed even at the shaved ice that will soon melt

You are drinking ginger ale on a rainy day, you seem like the rain itself

Clouds drift in the distance, making the fingernails of the people shine in a strange color

Come visit in the height of summer, if the bitter melon I planted today bears fruit, we'll have champuru

When people come to the sea, they all look at it as if their lover is on the other side

In the approaching signs of spring, I thin out the pure white flight feathers of the Java sparrow

Buying Gindaco takoyaki for the first time in a while, a long shot wins at the rainy Oi racecourse

A soldier dozing under the nostalgic light of the airport control tower

As I exited the revolving door of the city hall, there was an American soldier in a dotera robe

Water runs through the hose as if sensing the moment of death every second

Hardship in one's youth is worth buying, isn't it? You can smell the scent of the shore, can't you?

An unfinished report is, in itself, a contemplation on the sky.

Within reach, there is a silent parrot and a boy who swims.

The slight disbelief contained within belief—I grab a highlighter.

I want to become a new person; the sound of the air conditioning is very calm.

I gather the lights in the chests of those who are told that their youth has ended.

A wonderful cat I saw long ago, a cat licking an old baseball glove in the grass.

Warming my fingers with my breath, I yearn for the exceptionally blue twilight of the trash can that will soon arrive.

Climbing the slope while slowly drawing the great present back into both my lungs.

When switching from my natural voice to falsetto, the horizon is so close.

I tremble, wanting to remove the tire equipped on the sunrise-colored jeep.

Holding work gloves soaked in mud, I stand, even in the next dream I will see.

Many white moths come and land on the window; a soldier invited to a birthday party.

The siren sounds beautifully, a sudden evening shower that seems to sever the ancestors of humanity.

Laughing while swinging a long, long clothesline pole; everything is a fleeting love.

While bathed in the setting sun on the pedestrian bridge, myself yeah, myself yeah, myself yeah, myself yeah.

Starting from your cheeks, you become transparent as you walk along the August horizon.

While I am unable to eat my fried egg, the world map is being printed.

Finding yuzu, yuzu, and making a fuss, then tossing the yuzu up and catching the yuzu.

The sunset is just a sunset; a landslide victory in Monopoly against my own generation.

In the evening the exit is so clearly visible, a soldier who hates his own body

Filling in the education section of my resume, piling up only the events of spring

"Diffuse Reflection" (Modern Tanka Classics 12) by Nao Kojima

[From the collected poems]
The gentleness when whispering to a snail is like a faint sweat seeping into my armpits

The sky deep in the eyes of the ethics teacher who says the heart is inside the brain

The physics room where the coelacanth specimen is kept always has a faint ringing in my ears

It's not that there's nothing, but there's nothing, a day like a certain watercolor painting

The brightness after finishing the pineapple, the light of May on a round plate

The sunset I saw alone was too beautiful, so today I will sleep without checking my emails

There is a world I do not yet know, and summer is filling my body right now

Is your umbrella, which I don't see much anymore, also getting wet in today's evening shower?

The last school festival, I will never cut this many cardboard boxes ever again

The utility pole, wet black from the heavy rain, stands there bearing the light of a school of fish

A night when memories of a past life return while bending and snapping my plastic ruler

Shining like a space without a past, inside the convenience store on an August morning

If you find the Orion constellation like the one in the textbook, that is the reverse side of winter

Looking from behind at the earring hole of a friend singing a hymn in the auditorium

Eating mizuna, I rise up rustling toward the too-beautiful galaxy of midwinter

There is a faint hint of water in the cat's eyes, and there are two pears in the refrigerator

The weathercock turns, wet in the sunshower, a summer where a boy's ears are burning

There is light reflecting chaotically in the fountain, I who do not yet know sexual love

Everything flows slowly just like a breaststroke, in the buoyancy of autumn

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