Ray Rasmussen

This New Raw Season

Spring in Utah's canyon country, the land still denuded by winter's fury, bits of green here and there, branches broken by chill winds, clusters of purple locoweed that grow only in disturbed areas.

My only connection to the world, a static-riddled radio, brings the news, today's the kind that makes for sleepless nights: a village washed away by a tsunami, the countryside devastated by an artificial sun's fury – the Fukushima meltdown; a people, stunned, frightened, in tears.

It seems so far, yet so near, Japan, that small island of a people who love cherry blossoms and gave haiku to the world.

bent low
from a flash flood –
ancient cottonwood

Note: A revision of a piece originally published in Notes from the Gean.