Drum Bridge, by Wade Cook

Inside Kameido Tenjin Shrine, by Utagawa Hiroshige (Japan) 1856

Drum Bridge
 
If you want to know them, as you have said,
you must look beyond the darting swallows,
through the trellised wisteria curtain,
beyond those pilgrims crossing the drum bridge
in the train of history, whose steep arch
compels them to slow down and acquire
a proper mind for rituals of tea.
 
There they are, on the far bank of the pond,
the new people of Edo, merchant and
artisan, pleasured by the floating world,
soon to vanish in the tunnel of time.
 
They are there, deep inside the shrine, the ground
of Shinto, where the plum trees murmur in
meditation and rocks converse with stones.
 
But what is a drum bridge where no drum beats,
you ask. Then you should know it’s also called
a moon bridge, reflected on still water,
describing the circle of a full moon.
 
See that reflection as subconscious mind,
and think how little you can know about
anyone from any place from any age,
when half of everyone hides from being known.
 
And you say you know me so very well.
 
Wade Cook
 
Wade Cook lives on Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The Louisville Review, Broadkill Review, and The Orchards Poetry Journal. He graduated from Dartmouth College, where he studied creative writing with Samuel Pickering, the inspiration for Mr. Keating, the iconoclastic teacher in the film Dead Poets Society. He lived in Japan for a decade, working as an advertising creative supervisor with Dentsu and studying Japanese at Waseda University in Tokyo.