Back with You

Your father’s shakuhachi  
you saved from his things  

and brought back with you 
is hard to play  

I have trouble making long clear notes 
and get light headed  

after only a few moments  
of my strongest wind  

What is it like for you      
to hear these raw sounds   

coming from the back room 
your father having put his lips  

to the same groove as I  
his fingers over the same holes  

his breath down the  
same hollow bamboo?      

* * * 

You wanted to know 
the perfect word in English for kimagure  

the kind of spring rain  
when one minute it pours   

and the next it stops  
like tears  

I suggested intermittent  
but you said it sounded like a machine  

and periodic felt planned 
and irregular abnormal  

When I came up with isochronal 
you were done with me  

and searched on your own 
What about unsettling you said  

or temperamental? 
And I understood I had  

been looking in the wrong dimension 
In Japan where it is said   

there are fifty words for rain 
the clouds have moods 

JACK COOPER

Jack Cooper is author of the poetry collection Across My Silence (World Audience, Inc., 2007). His poetry, flash fiction, essays, and/or mini-plays have appeared in bosque, The Briar Cliff Review, Rattle, North American Review, and many others. Recent awards include Grand Prize Winner in Crosswinds Poetry Journal’s 2016 poetry contest.