28 years ago in Okazaki… JE to DO

"Your brother picked me up at Nagoya Station 28 years ago tonight, & hustled me out to his place in Okazaki. I stood in the street & smoked a cigarette & thought, 'What the FUCK?'"

Now there he is in Bahrain doing 'service' for the alphabets tri-codes 

with wife comfortably ensconced in Tokyo 

Occasionally grasping at new ranks when I tell him to "retire to a mountain house and climb Nagano alps and soak in hot springs every day"

yet he is savoring duty-free stores and long Frankfurt layovers, "there are benefits after all"

You, fresh poems out into the world, talking to poets with calm, tender aplomb 

Your Boys, boxing, weddings and teaching gigs
Stan, still

All the past loves with the letters bundled in string, fragrant and tracing the words with fingernails

Me, who slept probably on the same futon as you couple years before on an ill faded mushroom adventure (thanks for the "advice")

Circumnavigated the globe time & again, lost and looking for something, someone

Lost everything like a fake Buddha quote

After making other people rich to gloat

Leaving me with flashbacks of convention center trade shows

Yet fond memories of late night buzzy Seabusses to a forest hideout 

Sometimes remind myself "I am a story to foreign interns" 

And the wanderer brought me right back to where I retreated from the angry mushroom boss

Goats, wine, storms and then suddenly everything started again 

What the fuck in the end. Shall we send her a passport – Bulgarian, Albanian, Romanian... regardless, all the secrets laid out in ink & glue – heavenly id photomatics

A little human just woke up beside me asking for an extra blanket

Gary Snyder is so proud of us.

Did you mail him a book?