Noriko Nakada, Okinawa-USA
Family Haiku
Our Family Name / translated into English / means in rice field, to
flee Okinawa’s / smattering of rocky isles / overrun with pests.
Sail amber waves for / land in America where / anything will grow.
Plant, water, and watch / crops thriving, fruits ripening / on this borrowed soil.
Through the seasons, long / enough for the land to learn / your name and seedlings
know only this soil. / From the rising sun, sea planes / drop bombs, rake it all,
scatter the seedlings / across oceans, continents / Pacific, Europe.
Relocate the rest / to deserts where heart mountains / watch over caged pests.
Stare across miles of / bleak unsustainable plains. / No way to escape.
Set free those caged / pests who plant new crops once more, / who tend and water
so they grow again. / Watch these roots take hold and wait / for those tossed seeds to
drift back home, only / to witness elders fading / withering before
the seedlings can thrive / before fruit or flower bloom / before the harvest.
Meditation on the Morning Spent at the Soccer Field
Saturday mornings on Tifway 419 Bermuda
a hybrid grass, dark green in color.
It thrives in warm weather.
It is a dense and tough grass.
It recovers rapidly from injury.
It is drought resistant and has been popular for over forty years
so the grass I ran across in Oregon
while Dad knelt at the sideline tearing blades apart with his fingers
could be the same grass my kids tear across this Saturday morning
twenty million moments later.
Grass grows, regrows. The world spins and rotates.
The seasons shift and soccer is the grass beneath our cleats.
Because the grass is the same and so much else is the same:
the ball, the game, the pass, the shot.
Because leisure is where we plant our dreams,
for our kids and ourselves and our dying parents.
Because it is where we pass on love and life and breath,
and the grass beneath our feet might be what holds us together.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include a three-book memoir series about growing up mixed-race in rural America. Excerpts, essays and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue, and elsewhere.