Yoko Danno
Yoko Danno is our first guest poet. The first complexion of Yoko Danno's poetry is serenity. Then there's an undercurrent that speaks to us of sadness; after that, more stirrings of sweet secrets we don't dare to tell. Her poetry changes our ideas that not only the sun is glorious, but also its shadows. - Grace Cavalieri
Yoko Danno is Japanese and lives in Kobe. She writes poetry solely in English. Her poems appear globally in many magazines and anthologies, both online and in print. Her books and chapbooks of poetry include: Epitaph for memories (2002), The Blue Door, collaborative work with James C. Hopkins (2006), a sleeping tiger dreams of manhattan: poetry, photographs and sound by Danno, Hopkins & Bernard Stoltz (2008), trilogy & Hagoromo: A Celestial Robe (2010), and Songs and Stories of the Kojiki (2008), a translation of Japanese myths and legends compiled in the 8th century.
Yoko Danno says that writing poetry is like writing "love letters" to friends, as well as to people she has never met.
Water city
under a stone bridge
cormorants are hungry
even after fully fed, ready
to swallow more take
what’s happening below
the glittering surface
of the canal water – dust
falling from smiling angels
for a visitor demanding
an immediate answer
a tangible clue available
is a roach-ridden room
with chocolate and wine
shift only for your spirit
if shadows show the way
in this sunset-flooded city
On the trail of a dog
For four days my dog wouldn’t eat or drink. I kept him inside the house, gave him water, milk, and even minced meat, but he refused to eat or drink. He wouldn’t let me touch him, bristling at me. He was persistently within his own world, keeping me watchful of him day and night. On the fifth day he tottered to his feet and I let him go out. He urinated at his favorite fig tree in the corner of the backyard and came back, staggering. I decided to take him to a vet.
When I tried to take him down from my car, I found him unexpectedly soft and loose. The warm and spineless lump, heavy in my arms, lacked his usual stubbornness. He wasn’t breathing, eyes wide open, without seeing me. He was gone. I wrapped him in a purple blanket and buried him under the fig tree with a lot of yellow and red roses.
Later at twilight I followed a dog, wading through a river, until I was on the verge of drowning. I climbed out of the water, then took a long trail through the darkening mountain, and finally into a familiar-looking house. When it grew light I was aware that the dog had turned into my beloved late uncle—presiding over the table of my late parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, celebrating my dead son’s birthday.
On hurrying home from my family’s grave:
cherry blossoms
flare in a breath
to be one
with a death
in water
Last night the temperature dropped sharply from 15˚C to freezing zero. A chill was cast over the unfolding rose buds, due to bloom perpetually in bright yellow and deep red. To honor his memory I definitely need the color purple in my flower garden. The problem is which to choose—sweet-smelling violets, or dark-centered asters, or a wistful wisteria twining its way from tree to tree.
© Yoko Danno, all rights reserved
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