It’s already the 7th in Japan, so here is my annual tanabata poem, mixed with a bit of personal history…

A midsummer night
me, you
the five bridges
one of us must take
to get from here to there

I once crossed those bridges
thinking I’d already arrived
but the first four were the easy part
It was the fifth bridge—the most direct path
I could not cross

Something told me
I’d just been on this road
I had no choice
but to crash the car
and crawl from the wreckage

I hoped you would catch me
before I got back home…

I forgot that objects in the mirror
are closer than they appear
so I didn’t know you were watching me leave
the roads blocked
no way to get through

The next midsummer night
the stars are out
and the breeze is cool
when we get to that last bridge
perhaps we can meet halfway

(6 July 2017)