I stumbled across your black mass
like a shadow puffed to be addressed
among other blackened shapes, behind the naust.

From a distance you were an unfamiliar outline
on that thin, rock-strewn beach where I play
memory games with the tide, and win if not

a shape is cast in new light: a sea-swollen beam
off an old skiff; a log heaped late on Midsummer’s Eve
when the sun in our eyes outdances the bonfire;

or a green glass buoy from a lobster trap 
discarded there to now trick light into its dark sphere.
But it was you, dead, for me to investigate

with only a few flies to go by: an unbloodied Soutine’s
butcher table in low tide to dissect
yesterday night’s screams when I sat at my desk

in the dark with the probe of a reading light
imagining the Herons scaring off some Bats,
unsettled on mutual grounds for winter.

But these were clearly more violent screams –
the Minks perhaps? Black coats deadly in the night.
Or that one supposed Marten, shadow of a fox?

Unevidenced, I stumbled across your anatomy,
found no incriminating cut or twist, feathers unruffled,
unable to solve the crime, even to identify the body:

too black to give a grey heron alibi,
no white down to fill a pillowcase with motive. 
Then I saw your flaming bill and nostrils flaring.

(Hokkaido, Indigenous land of the Ainu)

Dew on ostrich ferns
          by a path unfurling
                                   to a lake,
                    under oaks and elms,
          ornamental maples
in brilliant orange,
          crimson, yellow—

On the shore, a red
          wrought-iron bridge
over the mouth of a river,
where transplanted kokanee salmon spawn
          in its color.

Across the water, Mt. Eniwa
          with a pointed head,
like Sakhalin firs that grip
its steep volcanic slopes;
their cylindrical cones erect too
in a purple hue that darkens.

Where shikot is a big hollow
          caldera lake,
perfectly cupped
like hands around a lacquerware bowl
of steaming clear and salty broth,
with chunks of salmon, potatoes and the chopped
dried leaves of wild Siberian onions:
          pukusa: deep green, garlicky
that again garnish soups
despite their aftertaste of ridicule:
          the Ainu negi smelled too much.

More than a language almost lost
in recipes,
utensils to museums
as artifacts;
rituals banned, fishing too
yet salmon stocks dwindled;
children taught tastes
and manners:

what not
to eat,
how not
to speak.

          Nearly still on the lake this morning
and mist rising to a clear sky
like soft blows to steaming soup.
At one point, the plaque on its shore
would’ve had me read:           Lake Engi
because Shikotsu        sounded too much
          like dead bones

But it stuck like flesh

          and      shikot  shikot  shikot

                       ripples from its sound bowl