One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse. (Illustration for November on my Japanese Calendar. Revised).

Hunched in a boat rocked by dark seas
The nurse is reciting one hundred poems
As though her whole life had been lived for this moment.
Tonight she looks far into the frightened eyes
Of her kneeling companion, gently touching her shoulder
As she calms her with soft spoken words.

The two women crouch low in the flimsy boat
While the oarsmen stand tall and dig deep for the shore
Their backs bending into the weight of their work.
A voice fierce with omens and treacherous dreams
Calls from the depths of the indigo ocean,
Cries that only the sailors can hear.

The nurse and her companion are land loving folk,
They are deaf to the subtle voice of the ocean,
The tall tales of sailors mean nothing to them.
The one hundred poems that the nurse reveals
In all their sonorous and intricate detail
Are songs of the meadows and meandering streams,

They are songs of the forests dissolving in mist;
Songs of the north lands man deep in snow.
Meanwhile in the prow of the wind ravaged boat
The lookout pulls hard on a long green rope
Taut as a Samurai`s bow in battle.
He pulls and pulls - the rope is snagged on the spine of a reef.

He spies through the waves strange corals and fishes
That seem to have come from a time beyond knowing,
A lost world far from the shores of Japan.
The women crouched in the depths of the boat
Know nothing of the visions that the lookout is scrying,
Their longing is for home and a quiet fireside chat.

The sky is the yellow of a November evening,
The long black hours are just minutes away,
But the boat has not yet reached a sheltered mooring,
That is why the oarsmen are digging so deep. -
A voice fierce with omens and treacherous dreams
Calls to the oarsmen from the depths of the ocean.

Where this journey commenced I cannot now tell you,
And where it will end is a riddle and a half.

Perhaps answers lie in the tall tales of sailors,
Or in the one hundred poems explained by the nurse.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
13th. - 14th. - 15th. September. - 18th. - 31st. October 2019. - 

4 th. March 2023.

From the print by Hokusai.