Silk threads of Plum Rain

Buttercup bright children

Mountains like large furry peaches…

This is the little bit I can remember of a poem I wrote while I traveled through Japan in 1980.

I intend to find the entire poem in the masses of clutter accumulated over the years. Only now do I realize what is important and what is not. My Kyoto poem is important. I will find it.

Below is a photo taken of me by a Japanese friend in Kyoto, the spring and summer of  1980.

Food was so expensive in Japan that there was no choice but to lose weight.

I’m not wearing a wig. This is (was) my natural colour.

Yukimasa Myagishi, my Japanese friend, designed the kimono I’m wearing. He told me that no one before me had ever worn his kimono.

To please her son, his mother wrapped me up in it, tying down the fabric with a bright yellow obi.

There is a long, very romantic story behind this kimono photo shoot.

It’s wonderful to remember.  

And to keep private.