If I had one wish it would be
to have been born two or three
hundred years earlier in Japan.

I'd adopt a new name:
Banana Tree or Blue Ink Pot,
or even Cup of Tea

and talk to crickets and swallows
knowing that the Milky Way
was reflected in their eyes, too.

I might take to the road,
the one to the Deep North
or live in seclusion complaining of too many visitors.

I would study how a tree
stands for itself and nothing else
and try to learn from it.

I'd teach important things
like ideograms, meaning "polite frog"
or "snail climbing Mount Fuji"

and on my wanderings fix my broken sandal thongs
or tears in my knapsack,
listening to the small songs of the insects.

At the end of my life I might find myself alone
living in a grain store with snow
falling through holes in the roof.