uneaten chocolates,
mystery novels with bookmarks,
boxes of medicine never opened
packing away....
throwing away.....
giving away....
my mother's unfinished projects
You have to come see the famous
fall colors of Kyoto, I told my brother.
But ironically it was my mother
who brought me home instead,
to the most vivid and bittersweet autumn
I have ever known.
As if for the first time, I witnessed
the trees along our street, aflame in red and yellow.
I was entranced by the eerie sight
of leaves dancing and swirling on the wet pavement
in the warm midnight breeze.
When I arrived, the woods behind our house
were alive with color,
but within a few weeks they became bare,
exposing the buildings in the distance,
the once-scenic view decorated
by only a few scantily clad saplings.
I returned to Kyoto,
oblivious to the green trees around me.
A second autumn came and took me by surprise
and the famous fall colors of Kyoto
stung my heart like cold hard rain.