blue paint

The house at the end of the block was skinny and blue and a little crooked like a bone knuckle. The house was old and the paint was peeling. Next to the house there was a large tree with leaves that became lemon yellow in the fall.

Now it was October and the house was watching the ground flutter with yellow. The house owned one man named James Moore and the man owned one dog named Frank. Frank was a chocolate lab. Chocolate cupcakes with berry frosting were his favorite but he also fancied chocolate souffle. Frank owned the blue house.

The blue house looked like chocolate to Frank. Whenever he felt sad he licked the paint on the front porch. Of course, the paint on the front porch was not tasty like cupcakes or soufflé, which was why Frank only licked it when he was sad.


James Moore came home one evening to find Frank licking one of the house’s wooden pillars.


“Frank,” James Moore said, “Frank, what’s wrong, Frank? Why are you licking the house again?”


Frank didn't stop licking. He didn't look at James Moore. His tongue was fat and oblong. It was pink splotched with a few dribbles of applesauce green. He licked the house long and hard. Chocolate blue paint flaked off into his mouth. About half of it Frank swallowed, the other half stuck in thin shards between his teeth.


“I know, I know” James Moore continued, squinting into the sun, “these leaves are all over the ground. I know.”


Frank stopped licking for a moment and looked at his owner. James Moore was very old. He had been born in the house, in the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom in the middle of the night. James Moore planted the tree next to the house when he was a little boy. When James he was a teenager he fell out of the tree, broke both arms and lost his right eye. His parents wanted to cut the tree down, but James Moore threatened to end the world if they cut down his tree, so they left it. When James was a young man, he got married underneath that tree. All three of his children also got married under the tree, and fell out of the tree before they were married. His youngest son broke his butt and the other two each broke fingers and toes. His wife said they ought to cut the tree down, but she didn't want the world to end any more than James Moore’s parents had, so the tree stayed where it was.


“Come on, Frank,” James Moore coaxed, “you get upset about these leaves every year. And every year it’s the same: the weather gets cold and the leaves die and they fall, but then they grow back again.”


It wasn't just that. The leaves indeed upset Frank quite a bit but he also despised yellow. One might say it drove him crazy and everyone would agree that it made him sad, very sad. To Frank, yellow was the saddest of all the colors and to have it blown all over the yard and the street like that, it was almost more than Frank could bare.


James Moore would have raked the leaves. That would have assuaged Frank’s sadness some, but James Moore was too old to rake the leaves and no one in the neighborhood would let their little boy go near the tree to clean up the leaves, because all the families on the block agreed that it had been cursed.


The paint was chunking off in long strips, crumbling all over the deck and all over the dog. James Moore remembered when the paint was new. He had painted it. It could have used a fresh coat, could have for decades, but James Moore was too old to paint. So the paint chipped and Frank licked away at it.


The year was 4048. Earlier this year, the house and the tree had been underwater for one month when the oceans spilled into the neighborhood. The townspeople had acted quickly to drain the water that submerged their home and when it was gone they built higher walls around the town that would keep the waters out. Still, the damage to the paint was irrevocable (lest someone should take a paintbrush to it) and the paint chipped even faster than it would have had it not been in the flood. The fish had sucked and chewed the wood before dying all over the lawn and on the floor inside the house and in the tree. Frank had eaten some of the fish inside and James Moore had thrown the rest on the lawn, where they rotted with the other fish already on the lawn. If the tree’s leaves had been yellow before the flood, they were really yellow after, since its massive roots had surely soaked up all the fish's guts. A few fish skeletons were still wedged between the highest tree branches. The fish had also been yellow.


“I’m sorry,” James Moore said again, “Frank, I’m sorry that I can’t rake up these yellow leaves.” Frank stopped licking and gave his owner a look so full of sympathy and care that it would make the oldest man in the neighborhood young again. (Could have, but did not, as James Moore was indeed the oldest man--oldest person--in the neighborhood and, although he felt completely at ease while the dog gazed at him, he was certainly not any younger. In fact, he was eight seconds older.


It didn’t matter to Frank that James Moore couldn’t rake up the leaves. It didn’t matter that there was yellow everywhere which made him feel heavy and sad. It didn’t matter because, just moments before, Frank’s fat, oblong tongue had grazed something other than wood and paint.


It was a morsel. It was a square with rounded edges, a round sort of square. The morsel was made of chocolate. So Frank bit. It was a delicious soft milk chocolate with one layer of semi-sweet.


He chewed and everything disappeared. The houses, the whole neighborhood, the river and the mountains, the clouds and the trees – everything was gone. Frank and James Moore were alone. They were alone with the house and their tree, the last tree on earth.


“Frank,” said James Moore, “Frank, you’ve ended the world.” James Moore had forgotten that the end of the world morsel was underneath the paint inside the center pillar.


Frank couldn’t believe his eyes. All that remained was the sky. The sky was the bluest blue and it was spilling everywhere. The sky was all over the ground and in the air. Frank blinked. The yellow leaves were gone. All the yellow everywhere was gone, except for the sun. The world that remained after the end of the world was completely blue. This made Frank happy. It was the happiest he had ever been. He stopped licking the paint and licked his owner, James Moore.


James Moore pet his dog and gazed at the new blue. It was beautiful indeed. Soon they had both drifted into sleep. In an hour they would wake up and go to the tree, settle into the branches and prepare for the business of cleaning up all the blue. It would be long but enjoyable work.

refill

My finger counts the keys from left to right. I touch the little toilet paper container key and the storage room key and then the square front door key. The keys are on a chord around my neck. The chord itches my skin sometimes but the boss says I’d lose them otherwise and he’s right. The clock shows two minutes until I have to open the bookstore. Several women and their kids are waiting in the parking lot outside. I do my best not to make eye contact.

Mark is leaning against the front counter next to the register, flipping through a magazine. He looks up at me. “One of the fish is dead.”

“One of the fish?”

“Yea. A silver one, a big one. The others are eating him.” He turns the page and then tosses the magazine on the counter.

“Eating him?”

“Yea.”

I imagine a hollow fish corpse bobbing at the surface of the tank, its old companions-turned-barracudas gnawing what is left of its tail and mouthing its remaining eyeball. “Do fish eat each other?”

“Yea.” Mark puts his hand down the back of his shirt, scratches, examines his fingernails, scratches again.

“How long has it been dead?”

Mark holds his hand close to his face, slides his thumbnail back and forth underneath the tip of his middle nail. “I don’t know.” His thumb moves on to the ring nail. It looks like his fingernails are mating.

I want to go look at the dead fish right now but it’s time to unlock the door. The women outside are eyeing me and peering through the glass at the clock on the wall behind the register. It’s fucking Saturday. Two little kids are putting their hands all over the window I just cleaned, smearing cloudy streaks of spit and skin oil. I walk, lean down, twist the key in the lock, smile at the women outside as I hold the door open.

Three middle aged women and one young-middle aged woman walk in. There are two little red haired girls in matching plaid dresses which I think is corny, two small boys walking behind the girls. The young-middle aged woman is pushing a stroller with a fat baby-kid wearing yellow Velcro shoes. There is another boy walking behind them – mop brown hair, hands in his jean pockets. I see him in here a lot; last week he started reading The Giver. He’s wearing a red shirt that says “I put Ketchup on my ketchup”.

“Hey, I like your shirt.”

The kid smiles and his front teeth bulge out of his mouth like they want to get out of there. “Thanks.”

One of the middle-aged women clears her throat. “Excuse me. There isn’t any music on.” 

“I haven’t turned it on yet.” I hate Saturdays.

“Well are you going to?” 

“Yes. I am going to.” She says okay, turns and keeps moving with the rest of the group towards the kid’s section. I walk to the café in the corner of the room.

“Hey Cathy.” Cathy is wearing an orange dress and her usual goofball smile that I think is wonderful.

“Hey Dennis.” She turns around and plucks a paper cup off the stack and holds it under the coffee spicket, pulls the lever so brown pours into the cup. She sets the cup of coffee in front of me and leans over the counter. I feel my heart beat a little faster.

“You see the dead fish yet?” She lowers her voice like the fish is a scandal. She smells like Chamomile tea.

“Not yet. I’m on my way over there though.”

“You should go see it, before it gets taken out.” Cathy smiles again. Her smile makes me think of cake and mimosas. I see Mark behind the espresso bar in a cloud of steam. He nods.

I walk to the condiment table, dump an inch of coffee into the trash can, pour three seconds of cream and four seconds of white sugar into my cup, fasten on a plastic lid. I tell Cathy and Mark that I’ll see them in a bit.

I go to the back room, kneel in front of my backpack, pour two seconds of Jameson from a metal flask into the cup. 

I need to paint more. I haven’t painted anything in weeks. I haven’t finished a painting in months. I stir the coffee with my finger and think that it would be great to paint with liquid pennies, brand new shiny pennies melted and globbed onto the canvas. If there were truly liquid pennies, I'd have something to work with.

I snap the lid back onto the cup, flip the music switch up on my way out of the back room. I walk across the store, around the corner past the photography section and the cooking section. My shoes look like dolphins moving against the carpet. The carpet is multicolored and formed into little nodules. It looks like what you see when you first close your eyes, like Fruity Pebbles and Coco Puffs cereal crumbled together.

The fish tank. I stop, put my fingers on the glass. The tank is a rectangle, two and a half feet wide and about six feet long. I imagine someone on the other side of the tank, looking through the water at my fingers pressed flat against the glass, the circle ridges red and obvious. The young middle-aged mother walks over to me. I see the kids' section behind her and about seven moms sitting there. There are kids rolling on the carpet and pulling books off the shelves. There are kids eating muffins and scones and getting crumbs all over the place, stepping on the pieces of pastry and smashing them into the carpet. Most of the mothers are talking and laughing. The woman is right next to me now. She has huge round eyes, dark angry eyes, outlined in brown makeup.

“Excuse me.”

“Yes? Can I help you find something?”

“No. There is a dead fish in that tank.”

“Yes.” I take a sip of my coffee. I sip it carefully. It is hot but not hot enough to burn my lips. I turn my head to look at the tank. The fish must be on the other side behind the plants.

The woman’s voice gets louder, heavier. “Are you going to take it out?”

“I have to call the fish guys. They take care of the tank.”

“Well it is scaring the children. You’ve got to have it removed right away. It’s horrible.”

“Alright, I am going to get it taken care of right now.” I move away before looking for the fish. I sip my coffee, walk away from the tank and the mother, walk past the cooking and the photography sections. I see a man walking towards the front counter so I go over there. I stand at the register and sip my coffee. The man’s hands are very large and there is a lot of black wiry hair on his knuckles. I wonder why he is buying hard cover. I tell him the book is better than the movie and the movie wasn’t bad. He forces a quick smile which makes his nostrils flare.

“$24.75” I tell him. I swipe his card, hand him the receipt to sign. I see the boss walk in out of the corner of my eye. The man wants a bag. I put the book into a plastic bag. “Thank you, sir. Have a nice day.” Silence. The man and the boss pass each other.

“Hey boss.” I put the signed receipt into the register and shut the drawer.

“Hi Dennis.”

“There’s a dead fish.”

“A dead fish?” 

“Yea. I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Well did you call the fish company?” he asks.

“Not yet.”

“Will you call the fish company and tell them to come get it out?”

“Yea. I’ll do it now.”

I walk towards the back room. I see Mark outside smoking a cigarette. I would like to join him. I go in and sit at the desk and find the fish number on the bulletin board. I dial it. I take a sip of my coffee.

“Hi. We’ve got a dead fish.”

“What is your location?” I tell the guy and he says he’ll send someone this afternoon. I tell the boss and the boss says that is great. Then he asks if I can stay late tonight. I do not want to stay late tonight but I tell him sure.

I walk over to the fish tank. I go quickly. I want to see this fish. Near the kids' section I look down at my blue feet and there is crap all over the carpet. I don’t care about it now but I know I will have to vacuum and scrape it out later. Four years of college to clean lemon poppy-seed muffin and maple scone frosting off the floor. I take a sip of my coffee. It has cooled down a lot.

The tank. I walk the length of it slowly. I see the fish in the bottom left corner. It’s upside down. Eight inches long, four high, a dull silver blue color, raw pink where some of its skin has flaked off. The water pushes the fish up and down which makes it seem like it is still alive. I get as close as I can. I feel the glass tank cool and smooth on my forehead, the only thing separating me from the fish. I imagine the glass bursting and water exploding from the tank, all of the fish flapping about on the floor, smacking their rubber bodies against each other, suffocating on air and carpet fibers. All except for the dead fish, which would lay motionless like a paperweight wherever it landed.

The water pushes the fish closer to me. Popping out from the side of its face is a bulbous yellow sphere, modest, totally indifferent: the eye. I step back from the glass to sip my coffee, more than a sip this time, a swig. One of the mothers is approaching me. The mother is fat and egg shaped but moves fast. A dark brown algae sucker fish moves upon the dead fish and starts opening and closing his lips over the gills. It is being eaten. The mother has huge fluffy hair that bounces as she walks. I can feel her behind me.

“Excuse me.” Another swig. My cup is getting light. The fish is staring at me. A child screams. Screams and starts to cry, starts to ball. It’s an awful howling cry.

I turn around. One of the little girls in plaid is on the ground next to the corner of a book shelf. The mother has stopped walking towards me and is hurrying to the child’s side. I turn back to the fish tank. Take the last drink of coffee, the sweetest sip in the cup, thick with all the sugar that sunk to the bottom.

The ketchup boy walks over to the tank. He’s wearing headphones. He takes them out, says hello. I say hi and he puts his headphones back in. We stand and gaze at the dead fish, bobbing along ever so slowly along the side of the tank. It looks kind of content, like an old man sitting alone on a beach, brown and wrinkled, sweating in his lawn chair. The child is screaming and screaming but the noise is getting farther away. The algae sucker leaves the fish and sucks on the glass in front of us. One of the other silver fish swims over to the dead one, nudges it, looks at its eyeball and keeps swimming.

June

The family farms are being kneaded with fresh soil and nourished with warm rain. The rice paddies are like a mirage between homes, and reflect the white fog above blue tile roofs.

A student brings me cucumbers from her garden.
A wooden tori on the mountain soaks in cedar sky-water as if it were a living tree and not a living symbol (it is both). Behind the tori clouds are loose between layers of blue mountain 
stretching apart so that yellow sun blinks in June's green. June is a pure month. A calm month. A sugar blue-lavender month.
When the sun goes down, the river and its little canals are full with croaking from Nagano’s new frogs. Their sound blends with the heavy air and fills my ears and eyes as I breathe in the hot dark.
The frogs make me wonder if the summer will bring lightning bugs to Nagano City. I think they'd like it here.

'squitoes

The mosquitoes are here.

Riding my bicycle
at the river,
they tick off my skin -
tiny sand-stone soldiers
in blanket swarms
falling away from my arms
and face
in the moist wind.

I narrow my eyes
and close my lips
when I see
the dot-cloud
but more often
I don’t see
until I am inside.
Ti-ti-ti-tic-ti-tic
Ti-ti-tic soft pin-
prick scratches
and then
the breeze.

Spring milk

Japanese milk is butter soft
like the plush beef cows,
fed wheat-beer
treated to massage
and to music.

The milk is creamier in winter,
I learn from my friend.
The milk is creamier because
the cows keep their fat.

After I know
I can taste:

Spring milk -
creamy still
but faster
off the tongue.

june is the season of rain.
the season of tulips and hydrangea.
it is the season of colorful umbrellas
popped open at the first grey cloud.

summer will be the cicada season
whose song will make the wet heat
even hotter

in our ears and in our hair.
our cheeks will be red

with the buzzing locust noise.

autumn was the egg season.
the full moon season.
the season of the soft boiled egg

between two burger patties
an oozing yellow moon mingling with teriyaki and lettuce.
there used to be a ceremony, a holiday that grandparents remember.
now autumn is the season of eggburgers.

and june - june june june - is the season of tulips and typhoons.
i imagine maniacal wind blowing the little people
clutching umbrellas and shopping bags,
lifting them off the sidewalk and shuffling them all over the street -
a neat seastorm of umbrellas red and blue and black and yellow pokadot
flying around nagano city, high school girls trying to keep

their hair dry and skirts down
and the salarymen with flailing briefcases trying to smoke cigarettes in mid air.
the wind and the umbrellas and all the bicycles

and small cars and tiny dogs
and leaves and flower petals and fresh soil all mingled together
at an airborne june cocktail party where everyone is friends in the wind
and soaked in the rain despite their umbrellas and raincoats.
perhaps everyone will laugh and ask for more beer
which will float over in tulips red and orange and yellow

and june will last forever and nagano will never dry.

pine-stone steps: the forest shrine in hakuba

A stone staircase rises from the wooden tori
skinny and winding like in an old Victorian home.
Polished cedar floors are forest dirt
the vibrant rugs: patches of wet green moss -
baby tears in the front yard of my childhood home.
The walls are pine
whose wrinkled bark can tell a thousand stories
in the spacious living room.

There is that clear
champagne fizz feeling.
This is a holy place, a quiet-tree place
and we step lightly
for this is where
some spirits live.

At the top there is a wooden shrine and there is a young pine,
thin and fresh and in no hurry to grow tall but without fear of its future.
Thick sponge moss
moist and rich like the finest earth water
blankets the ground
and a few brown mushrooms
have grown to half its height.

I kneel and breathe in the little tree.

Then we turn
and begin walking down
the stone steps
our noses wet from the clear cold.
We watch our feet
so as not to stumble
over a tree’s root -
a rug folded up on one end.

yuri-yuki (lily snow)

It is the golden hour and I ought to go outside.
It is my favorite time of day, and everything
is new again.
The hour is such a treasure that I half expect to see lilies
emerging from the cold February ground,
glittering in snow.

I go outside and, to my surprise, there are lilies everywhere, white
and creamy like ocean froth.
I can scarcely see the sidewalk for all the lilies.
The air is golden and my breath is shallow
and warm beside my face.
I close my eyes and the gold is still with me,
shimmering like the sun
setting upon the sea-stone beach in Nicaragua
flickering off surfboards and white falling waves -
but now the waves in Nicaragua are white snow-lilies in Nagano City
and they are so lovely
I almost cannot bare to see.

Buttersnow

I woke up heavy and blurred, my dreams like fallen persimmons, soft and sticky on my face. The dreams that day in January were right behind my eyes, but hidden and quiet behind memory and wondering. My wheat colored curtains were glowing peach-orange. The day was cloudless. I knew this because it was that kind of clear winter light that illuminated the curtains just so. Today there would be no snow and the air would feel cool and light on my ears as I rode my bicycle to work.

All day I could not remember my dreams. They were lost to me. Spiraling upwards into the abyss of clear blue sky, up up to the edge of space where they broke apart piece by piece and forgot themselves.

In the days that followed, snow fell. It was a weightless dry snow,
tiny flecks flit-flittering light as air, wisping through moist sun,
riding the breeze as if
that is their life’s only
dream and they are
dreaming
as they
live it.

By the second day of snow I remembered all my dreams and by the morning on the third day I could picture each dream as if it had just happened and I had not been asleep at all:
I go to a novelty store and buy a giant straw like an elephant’s trunk and slurp up the sunlight
in the curtains
so that my body becomes swollen and bulbous with clear winter sun
and I am warm forever.
I receive training from a karate master.
I realize my purpose in this world.
I miss an airplane at the airport but a little floating contraption like a dingy boat appears
at the gate and I fly my friends and I to California from Japan
– all the way across the Pacific fueled by mind power
dodging redwood branches in Yosemite valley and almost skimming the water
near Catalina Island.
The world is beautiful and I run in the air like the Flintstones, my feet flailing underneath our vessel.

The dreams were vibrant and clear and the snow was bright white on the ground. It crunched under my feet and I rode my bicycle in the tire tracks of other bicycles. Yuri and I talked about our dreams at work. We had good dreams and bad dreams too. Yuri was in my dream with the contraption that flew us all the way across the Pacific. Yuri is scared of flying in dingy boats so she was glad that I had that dream and not her.

On the third day of snow, I rode my bike to work, very carefully because by now there was lots of snow on the ground, the first time that winter any had really stuck. I rode next to the train tracks and emerged at the city center, next to Nagano train station. I waited for the green man and the crosswalk jingle that always makes me feel optimistic and as I was waiting I looked at the Giant Apple Clock that is directly above my classroom and the convenience store and the souvenir shop. Nagano is famous for apples. I often visit the apple orchards along the mountainside. The apples are large and inviting but I don’t take any because they belong to the farmers’ who tend them.

It was one minute until the hour. In one minute the blue pigeons would come out of the apple clock and move their heads side to side while teeter tottering up and down and chirping along with the clock’s song, which would overpower the crosswalk jingle two hundred to one.

The green man flashed on and the crosswalk song began, signaling to the people that it was safe to walk. Snow was falling. I began to ride and my tire slipped a little. Snow stuck on the fur lining around my jacket hood.
My eyelashes felt heavy with snow.
The snow was not light anymore.
It was heavy and sticky and didn’t melt on my skin.
The birds began to sing and many people looked up at them. The birds were blue and snow was falling on them. The snow wasn’t white. The snow was sticky. The birds collected a yellow sort of egg-yolk snow.
I could see the snow shining on the ground. The birds were cheerful as ever. People were looking around at their hands and at each other, looking at their arms and umbrellas and at the ground.
The snow wasn’t white. It was yellow. The snow was soft and squishy. It stuck and slid on the ground like grease. The snow slipped off the birds’ eyes and wings. The birds’ wings were flapping and their heads were turning side to side. The snow was yellow. The snow was butter.

This was the first butter snow in Nagano.

I ran into work and found Yuri and told her that there was butter outside.
“Really?” she said.
“Yes, butter. The snow is just like butter. I think it is butter.”
“The snow is butter? What?”
“The snow is not snow. It is coming from the sky but actually it is butter. It is snowing butter!”
“Really? But-ter?”
“Yes!”
“Do you mean – “
“Come on!” I hurried Yuri to the door. We stepped outside. The birds had stopped singing. Yuri and I walked down the steps. Sure enough, the snow was still butter.

Yuri reached out her hand and I did the same. We licked our fingers.

“This is butter!” Yuri said.
“Yes,” I agreed, “It is.” We didn’t know what else to say – what else was there to say? - so for a minute we just stood and licked our fingers. There were many other people standing around in groups of two or three doing the same.

“Hmm.” Yuri said after several seconds.
“Hm.” I agreed again, nodding with my ring finger in my mouth.

Half of the students could not make it to their English lesson that day, on account of the butter. The roads were awfully slippery so most people cancelled work or school.

The students that did arrive spoke endlessly about their dreams. Everyone remembered their dreams. Their dreams were clear as day, they said. They had never remembered their dreams so clearly before. Also, it had never snowed butter before so everyone agreed that this was a highly unusual day indeed.

The next day it snowed butter again. By now people had had enough of it. They couldn’t drive their cars or ride their bicycles. They grew restless. The damn butter was everywhere. The trains had stopped running in and around Nagano as well. Strangely enough, it only snowed butter in Nagano. In Tokyo, the snow was just normal old snow. People from all around wanted to come to Nagano to see the buttersnow but of course there was no way for them to get there so they could only see pictures of it on television and in the newspaper.

The prime minister declared a state of emergency in Nagano. How long would the buttersnow continue? Nobody knew. When would the trains be able to run again and when would people be able to drive cars on the street? The prime minister assured everyone that, if need be, necessary food-stuffs and supplies would be transported by air into the city and, anyway, Nagano had plenty of its own fruits and vegetables and even sheep to eat.

Really, the people of Nagano had nothing to worry about. So most people did not worry too much.

Everyone continued to remember their dreams as if they were real. Actually, they were so amazed that they could spend whole days recounting their dreams to one another without losing interest. It was truly a phenomenon, especially for those who normally lost their dreams to the endless vacuum space above.

People didn't mind the yellow mess that coated everything. They gave in to the buttersnow and, they adored the dreams it gave them.
They visited other planets,
made friends with beings from all sorts of wondrous and beautiful dimensions,
and discovered the most fantastic meaning of life: butter.
Everyone decided that butter was,
without a doubt, the culmination and indeed the meaning of all human existence.
Nothing could exceed the magic and purity of butter.
Butter was greater than water,
greater than time,
greater than all the gods ever invented,
greater than cars and airplanes,
greater than everything.
And, moreover, butter was everything,
combined into a delectable spread that fell from the sky
and that people could lick leisurely from their dream-heavy fingertips
and that melted into their tongues to become a part of them
for as long as they existed, which was, obviously, forever.

The buttersnow lumped on the earth in tiny mounds. The old stone buddhas became aglow, as the butter draped as cloaks over their shoulders and foreheads. The main hall of Zenkoji temple collected heaps of butter on its roof.

The butter was smooth and creamy, not like sticks of butter kept in the refrigerator, but the soft, wonderful butter that exists after resting in a ceramic dish on the kitchen countertop for several hours so that it can be spread easily on bread or fingertips without breaking into chunks.

People could not go to work or school. They glided around outside their homes, laughing and slipping and licking butter off themselves. They let the butter cover their clothes. They let their hair become slick with butter, and fashioned it into the butter twist and the butter hive and the butter hawk.

They sat on their balconies with steaming coffee and caught flecks of falling buttersnow in their cups. To their delight, butter is most delicious in hot coffee.

The children, of course, made buttermen and butterangels and butterbirds.

The grown-ups did the same.

After one week, the buttersnow stopped. The sky cleared and Nagano became too warm for butter to fall. The butter dripped off of rooftops and fences and cars, melted into gutters and absorbed into the soil and the sidewalks.

Soon people could drive their cars and ride their bicycles. The people of Nagano returned quietly to work and to school. Nothing lasts forever, except of course for ghosts and dreams. Everyone remembered the dreams they had had that week for their entire lives. They lived by those dreams and never stopped speaking of them.

Later that year, the apples would be swollen with butter, and they would be the most delicious apples anyone had ever eaten. Farmers would sell them to people all over Japan and abroad and become famous and wealthy. Many of them would give their extra money to people lingering in the train station or in the underpass, who had no money of their own.

Everyone hoped that it would snow butter again but it hasn’t yet. Of course, that isn’t to say it won’t – in Nagano or perhaps anywhere on Earth or anywhere on any planet for that matter. But the people of Nagano still drink butter in their coffee. They don’t make any special effort to remember their dreams but sometimes they do, clear as butter on hot toast, and the dreams are fantastic beyond measure.

Springtime in Tokyo

Outside the day is like Autumn in California
says the short-haired Japanese woman,
the inn-keeper
shuffling the house slippers into tidy lines atop the step.
The day is warm and dry and the sky is blue-blue.
It is my favorite type of day, and if there is wind –
There is.
I gush at the prospect of fresh dry wind
like California’s Santa Anas
that make me high on wild-happy and desert sweet.
The fat yellow-eyed cat of the house
sits behind the woman and meows.
He’s quite the talker I tell her.
She has stopped arranging the slippers
and is staring at the front door.
He’s got problems – constipation
especially in this season.
Oh, that’s too bad.
Yes. It’s too bad. Have a wonderful day.
I say thank you and smile and float through the door
and down the street to the train bound for Shinjuku.

white winged succulence

will save us

with benevolence

savoring sakura

A smatter of cherry
blossom
pit-patter pinking into the underpass.
Wet with the flight of cold rain
they relent on the steps
turning the pavement to honey blush
which carries me down to heaven.