Kogarashi, Winter Wind Warns, by Victoria Crawford

Kinkakuji, by Tsuchiya Koitsu (Japan), approx. 1930s/1940s.

Kogarashi, Winter Wind Warns

Walkers hurry scurry
striding autumn streets,
Indian summer clutched
in morning shiver sweaters.
Eyes glance north, checking.

Maple heat of flames slope
above Kyoto, ablaze
while the chill seeps downhill.

The noren concealing
the entryway garden
quivers in a northern breath
that exhales, ‘kogarashi’
in yellowing bamboo ears.     

On forested ridges,
leaves transmute into  
silver and gold tremors,
like living Kinkakuji,
like shining Ginkakuji.                   
Braziers lighted echo
sylvan autumn colours. 

Bitter gust winter warns.
A leaf falls. ​

Victoria Crawford

A writer/poet, Victoria Crawford is retired in Chiang Mai, Thailand, but she has lived in many countries.  In her poetry, she loves to share the world and her joy in it with the reader from the sands of the Rub al Khali to the coastal redwoods of the Pacific Northwest.  Painters and poets have been revealing the world for thousands of years going back to the caves of Lascaux and yet there is so much that is still not known.