Bamboo
by Sharmagne Leland-St.John

shadows
in grayscale
dance across
the whitewashed
bedroom wall
leafy patterns sway
recalling memories
of our paper house
near Kyoto
where bamboo stalks
were silhouetted
outside thin shoji
screens
tall and straight,
in the strongest wind
unbending
they survived better
than our flimsy,
fragile house,
now nothing more than
a childhood memory
while the bamboo
became
a magnificent
grove
a forest
of dancing leaves

in the distance
wind chimes tinkle