If I Were a Poet

He wakes up in the early morning
and goes out to pick radishes,
just like when he was a child,
with Mt. Fuji hovering in the background,
like a ghost in the sky smiling down on him.
When he returns, his grandfather says “thank you dear child for the radishes in my soup.”
But now he walks more slowly down the path to the garden;
the radishes seem smaller, less sweet.
But he loves the garden
and doesn’t always notice Mt. Fuji in the sky.
There will come a time
when the garden will be overgrown, like his body, with weeds.
And as he lies the last time in his bed,
looking out the window,
he will not see Mt. Fuji
because the window faces west,
but he will hear it there in the sky, speaking in his grandfather’s voice.