Two Poems by Cesar Polvorosa Junior

At the Summit of Mount Fuji

The clouds below my feet like vast cotton fields
heaved and swirled as swift rivers that flowed
and stirred the sun to awake.

This craggy crater edge, rock strewn and desolate
was the rim of the universe.
I was at the verge of forever, snared in wondrous vertigo.
I groped my way to the top and crushed at my feet
beer cans, cigarette butts, the flotsam and jetsam
of the inheritors.
I climbed over outsized boulders, cut by jutting rocks
and stumbled in unexpected crevices.

What provoked the ancient gods to vomit lava from its
deepest bowels and rain brimstones
on the scarred, sacred land of Amaterasu and Izanagi?
What extravagance for the symmetry of geometry!
What exuberance and audacity for the immortal!
But the gods were in slumber.
I rather be at the sanctuary of Lake Kawaguchi and view
the mountain from its shore.
Even then, Mount Fuji was just an eruption, a mere pimple
on the facial skin of the earth.

The world itself, for all its fissures and seizures,
gloom and glare coruscated like a sapphire
in the void of space.

Zen by a Pond

The water was still but I am not deceived.
Life lurked in the murky depths.
There- a streak of silver, a furtive fin shimmered.

Gone in a flash in the tiniest ripple
was the water spider flaunting its miracle.
On the muddy bank I watched
the sun broke the darkness
and revealed the island in the endless sea.
The rod I hold waited with anxious resolve.
Just as the sun touched the zenith of the sky,
my fishing reel quivered from a sudden pull,
pulsated right through my core.
With feverish movements, I reeled the line in.
It was a robust Asian carp,
the lord of its domain.
Plucked from its dark element,
and thrusted into the blinding glory of the sun,
it thrashed on the mud bank
and emitted the shrillness, the poignancy
of voiceless ululation.
Cursed with the agony of not knowing,
there was not even a revelation at life’s expiration.
Perhaps just as well,
for the primal impulse that impelled its tail
was not knowing its destination.

The ripples have disappeared.
There was no evidence of a struggle.
The water was still once more.

Two Poems by Cesar Polvorosa