Japan.

I wish I could give you Hokkaido winter

like you want it. Independence,

structure, cultural benevolence

ought to be a simple inheritence.

I’m not disinterested

---

but I don’t know what it holds for me

to be in a place where I can’t speak,

can’t understand. Where my very bones ache

with the cold, the two of us making

our way in the world, alone. Put that way,

---

I understand your wish

and even feel it too, raw in the gut,

but I don’t know if it’s enough for us

to move a hemisphere, into something you know

and I don’t.

---

This short poem was written as part of the ‘Alphabet Superset‘ programme: it is quick work and is unedited.