The Base of Meguro, Shimo - Meguro. Illustration for October on my Japanese Calendar.

Seen from a distance
Mount Fuji seems tiny,
Smaller than the lone man
Climbing the path
That skirts the wide base of the heights of Meguro
Soaring sheer and absolute in the white morning light.
He carries a straight stick across his shoulders,
The weight of the bundle that hangs from the stick
Seems to unnerve him,
To pull him backwards,
But his gaze is fixed on the climb before him,
He concentrates with the ferocity of an old Zen Master.

Other folk are trudging a different pathway,
Some to - some from the small thatched dwellings
Huddled tightly together
As though they are desperate to keep safe and warm.
This perhaps is a mild day in early October,
But winter storms are now not far away,
And the people walking the pathway near to the village
Wear thicker coats than were usual a month or two back.
But the lone man climbing the steep mountain track
Is dressed in a simple indigo shirt
As though it were still the high days of summer.

The weight of the bundle is pulling him backwards,
But he resists the pull and struggles to climb
The path to the other side of the mountain,
And a clearer view of distant Fuji.
But whether or not he completes his Journey,
And for how many days he trudges the roads,
These things are not for us to decipher
As we carefully study the print in its frame.
The artist has painted one moment in time;
Just a few minutes later then all could be different.
Perhaps the man would be dropping his bundle.
Perhaps he would have walked right out of the scene.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 17th. - 26th. - September 16th. 2019.
Note. When Hokusai made this print Meguro appears to have been very rural, now it is more or less a part of modern day glass and concrete Tokyo. I thought about referring to this in the poem, but it would have disrupted the sense and broken the mood.