Eat Pray Love

On the edge of the evacuation zone Miyuki holds her daughter tip-toeing in pink sneakers her small hands fragile blossoms opening to the man with the beeping wand They were outside in the karesansui washing and raking rocks, when the school heaved, convulsed then pressed into silence one-hundred-and-seven voices rising inside So now they wait with strangers in ordered lines of sorrow for bread and drinking water as an adolescent, eyes downcast sees the small pink laces and offers up his only ration of precious onigiri Hooded and white masked they walk three days and bed-less nights toward Ishinomaki by the ocean to family, friends, and home forever transformed The landscape jumbles unfamiliar with plastic wreckage and automobiles detritus flooded in a field where Japonica once grew while moon-suited men and women gather albums for the living And after sunset Miyuki moves her little girl away from a white-taped blue-bagged lifeless form toward the humming black-robed Monk, his prayers for light and workers burned exposed to radiation ten thousand times too high And in the shadows one old man kneels beside a fetid pool and scoops rice to carry back to neighbours moved to higher ground, un-opens one last bottled spirit bows his head and offers Miyuki and her first and only everything he has At last they reach the shelter’s glow beneath the starless robe of night not used to wearing shoes indoors Miyuki helps her daughter fold sheets of painful news into an origami box to hold her last and only pair And in the morning as they face the stretch of road for home to unknown love and losses there they turn and gaze toward the east awaiting still spring’s warming breeze to rise with brilliant red once more new light of wondrous dawn ~~~~~~~~~ 'karesansui' is a Japanese rock garden or 'dry landscape'. Rocks are often washed. 'onigiri' is the emergency rice being distributed to survivors in Japan. 'Japonica' is a type of (short-grained) Japanese rice. for Debbie Guzzie's contest, 'Tribute to Japan' by ~Soulfire~