Tsunami

Do not rush to know the difference as that will be a door
too large for those who rush. Take instead the slow touch
of bamboo. Come each morning to the same tree and rub
it slowly the way you would rub a limb of your own.
Know that you may lose it to a surgeon’s knife and touch
every thin line. Feel the color of a single shaft of the thing
the way you would find the smallest places on a finger.
Put your lips against the leaves the way you would kiss
the hair on your own arms. Embrace it with all of you
and promise to keep the farmer’s axe away. Promise to shoo
away the poison air of the cities. Ask the earth to bless
it with children that are bamboo. Come at night and wait
for the bamboo to sing in the wind, wait until the song comes,
until hunger makes you angry. Think of the lines of bamboo,
how they shoot up and then bend with their accomplishment.
This may take more years than you have, or you may press
the bamboo into a heartless fear of its own beauty.
If so, start again, more slowly this time. After each step,
pray for the children who went back into the sea without
enough time to learn the songs of bamboo, or to remember.