As I Journey East

Come along with me as I journey East where fragile cherry blossoms flutter before raining down from cloudless skies. Let's climb majestic mountains whose crests are always laced with crowns of snow. Here, the scent of jasmine is caught in a breeze. Bonsai forests hold ancient secrets of long past civilizations. We will see dragons who seem to soar beyond the moon, then take the shape of koi with the rising sun. Listen as bamboo chimes sing in windswept percussion. Their hollow voices reach across Tokachi River. Legend says it was etched by the flowing tears of a young Geisha who cried all night when she saw her red-budded lips mirrored in a lake. It's now a sacred place where lovers often meet when the hint of a sanguine sunset fills the sky. Their whispered words of passion's promises are drowned in roars of towering waterfalls. Say you'll come and we'll fly amid flocks of crane, across paddies and valleys of lush green, then feast upon crispy roasted duck before we lick our fingers clean of Hoisin. Sleep will find us beneath a blanket of willows, and we'll gaze in awed wonder when we wake, at the most exotic land of splendors we've ever seen. We'll surrender promises that one day we will return, for this is where our hearts now wish to dwell. Give us brushes and canvas; paints of boldest oils to capture the Oriental beauty, naked before our eyes. July 1st, 2017 Exotic Places by Debbie Guzzi