Plucked from a junk shop
chipped celadon
shadow of a swallow's wing
or cast by Venetian blinds

on tinged legal pads
one summer Saturday
in 1957.
Absorbed at his big desk

My father worked on briefs.
The little Royal makes
its satisfying chocks
stamping an inky nimbus

around each thick black letter
with cut-out moons for Os.
Curled up on the floor,
I'm writing too: "Bean Soup

and Rice," a play about
a poor girl in Kyoto
and the treasure-finding rabbit
who saves her home. Fluorescent

light spills cleanly down
on Danish Modern couch
and metal cabinet
which hides no folder labelled

"blacklist" or "party business"
or "drink" or "mother's death."
I think, This is happiness,
right here, right now, these

walls striped green and gray,
shadows and sun, dust motes
stirring the still air,
and a feeling gathers, heavy

as rain about to fall,
part love, part concentration,
part inner solitude.
Where is that room, those gray-

green thin-lined
scribbled papers
littering the floor?
How did

I move so far away
just living day by day
that now all rooms seem strange,
the years all error?
                          Bowl,

What could
I drink from you
clear green tea
or iron-bitter water

that would renew
my fallen life?