The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Martin Willitts Jr

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai (Japan) 1829?

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa
 
I do not want to intrude where I do not belong; however, I have to follow an urge, a great tidal wave, I call Love. I must discover and re-learn the world before it changes again, forming larger and larger into a tsunami. If I hurry and take my time, I can paint with new love. Everywhere I will go, I will notice what is happening and what is not happening. In the silence or among the crisp noises, in the drowning light or pitching waves of darkness, I must find out what is important and what is insignificant. I have to see the unseen, hear the voiceless, embracing sweltering colour and light within Love, and experience the calmness afterwards.
 
Love is heading towards Mount Fuji, shoved back by uncontrollable waves. I cannot control the wind, or the way the world goes from dark to light and back again, or the amount of time a snail crawls across a leaf. 
 
How quickly the washes of colour change the sky; and still, it looks as clear as water! Mount Fuji cannot do anything about the weather, either. 
 
The world knows changes can be good, bad, or indifferent. Some invisible paintbrush is moving the color of waves. During the violence of waves, there is no sound before, too much sound during, then silence after ships are broken into pieces, floating like plum petals on a stilled pond. 
 
My hand sketches this scene. Love tilts along with the sun setting into the ocean. The sky cries for help and mercy. Ships are caught and released, caught and released, caught and released.
​

Waves toss boats as leaves.
The sun never sets on dew 
in a plum blossom.

​Martin Willitts Jr

Martin Willitts Jr has 24 chapbooks including the winner of the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 11 full-length collections including The Uncertain Lover, (Dos Madres Press, 2018)  and Coming Home Celebration (FutureCycle Press, 2019). He is an editor for The Comstock Review.