In Kyoto together,
and she needed walking shoes.
We found a store on a neon corner,
and the clerks gathered round.
Hard to express the delicate dance
of her fingers, as if words
were merely an opening: intricate
as paper cranes, hypnotic
as the tea ceremony at Jotokugi temple.
The clerks gabbled like geese
in a great worry because, despite
her petite-four dress, her shoes
were nines—monstrous!
They tried this, tried that.
Her callused feet arched
like swells on a Hokusai sea.
They bathed in its spume,
and in their Keystone Kops routine,
I saw myself, trying to make things fit
with the inventory I had in stock,
while the tide fled
beneath my fingertips.