Lines Written in Himeji, 2008

Each day I skate tectonic plates
the disconnect is now the norm
reality’s a fracture zone
Guernica at junior high
the all-girl band at Kobe Quay
swings American Patrol
too young to see the irony.
I smile and share the joke alone.

And in the aisles of Bon Marché
Mulligan and Brubeck groove
like someone took the Books of Man
and Space and Time and cut them up
then threw the pieces to the wind
and they (and I) just landed here…

Rob Walker

(As Lines written in Himeji, 2008, this poem made the final 5 in Making sense of it National Poetry Competition, Australian Poetry Centre, 2010. It also appears in Friendly Street’s 35th poetry anthology Sorcerers and Soothsayers, ed. John Pfitzner & Tracey Korsten, Wakefield Press, 2011. The very basic koto and shakuhachi playing is my own.)