Within the Great Wave of Kanagawa

Swallows porpoise the sky:
flippering moon-slivers of black rubber, grey
on the turn.

The fingers of Hokusai's wave:
hand poised to close as the birds switch, rebound
bungeing invisible arcs.

The white finger tips gently fall against
the grey misted morning. High in the far distance
a horizontal cross moves imperceptibly slow,

glass-framed, like a floating pen, sliding along,
held on a clear track,
continuously measuring window frame to frame

with mechanical precision, darkening, lightening.
A steel-wrapped Pandora's box of sound,
it moves silently above the old glass smelting cone:

faint cuneiform of white cement
between bricks barely visible,
buried beneath the baked smoke.

At the side of the full grown Rowan,
its black diagonals aiming for intersection.
The Rowan leans, its berried cargo scattering

around the cone: top spoon scooped like a boiled egg
forming the lip of a milk jug reaching into the sky
ready to pour pure air.

Julia Reckless