Killing time, we find a stretch of sand
and wait for the sun to fade
in the bay’s rough curve.
So I tell you how I’ve learned
death is Daliesque—an elephant on stilts,
a camellia grown in the ocean.
How every set of eyes that met mine
knew someone,
something now gone.
Oshima sits quietly, just south of Yokohama.
Their disaster is two decades old now,
a story between mouthfuls.
So carefully you reply,
watching the water
turn solid in the dark.