Echoes

It is getting easier to invoke the echo

Of my Baasan’s chime as she burned incense

In her living room shrine. I used to touch

The chime when all that remained was a gentle

Hum, then I would follow my grandmother’s white

Slippers as she walked down the hall.

I can’t remember anything about that hall.

It was just a passage that did not echo

Like the big bedrooms of my grandparents’ white

House in Richmond, California. In a sense

I lived my childhood in those rooms, Baa’s gentle

Hands always keeping me from touching

Anything of danger. My grandfather’s rare touches

Were as sharp as his distanced voice as he hailed

Us on fishing trips. Yet I could see his gentleness

As he baited hooks, casting them into the Elko

River on our last trip, after Baa died. I lost innocence

Drained like warmth, as I played in the water, my white

Feet shivering. Now as I pass through white

Clouds on my way back there, the plane touches

Down on distant soil. I have smelled incense

At many funerals since I last walked the halls

Of my grandparents’ house. There are no echoes

There for me anymore. I don’t know the gentleman

Who now lives there or whether anyone gently

Tends the young pink roses or bright white

Carnations that helped my grandparents eke out

A living. I think that past is beyond my touch.

The only place where the long halls

Can still be redolent of Japanese incense

Is in my memories as my darkening time assents

To the loss of anything I can even gently

Grasp before my senses bring time to a halt

And the long shafts of age bring me to white

Curtains that after years of many touches

Have attained the dignity of an ecru

Veil. I am not innocent to the touch

Of these shrouded halls for I have seen the white

Tread of my grandparents echo there before me, gently.