The MotherVerse Blog: mothering out loud

Following is a poem by Annie Donwerth Chikamatsu from Tokyo, Japan. Thanks for your submission to MotherVerse Annie.
Here is her bio…

Annie Donwerth Chikamatsu is a former university instructor having taught in the United States, Malaysia and Japan. Her work has appeared in publications in Japan, the U.S. and the U.K and cyberspace. She lives with her two children, husband, and in-laws in Tokyo, Japan. She maintains a photoblog for kids, Here and There Japan.

A View of Mt. Fuji

We’d made this pilgrimage
a month of Fridays
but never in January.

Dark already at five,
the neighborhood kitchen clanged
of stove tops and soup pans.

The pungent perfume
of butane
and salty fish broth
spurred me into larger strides
toward the rituals that waited at home.

I heard him
puffing up the hill behind me,
tired after his tennis lesson,
his legs struggling to climb up the incline.

Keeping my pace,
I turned to look at my son and saw Him
far away, across and through
the clear winter canyons
of skyscrapers
silently standing
in the regal orange and purple remnants
of the day’s light.

I halted sideways, stumbling
almost falling to my knees.

“What is it, Mama?” he asked as he reached me.

He was below my hilltop view.

I swooped him up to my eye’s level.
We looked up into the distance together.
Instant recognition and understood exaltation illuminated his face.

“You missed this?” he whispered,
his breath feathering my cheeks
like angel wings.

“Yes, I’ve missed this,” I said, pulling him closer.

I couldn’t say how and when I had stopped looking up.
I hadn’t even noticed myself.