look to the mountain
a collaborative poem by Bachan and me
My Bachan (grandmother), Mary Maruyama (Wada) and I share a special connection. Throughout my life, my Bachan shared her love for poetry with me and I grew to love it as well. She would recite poetry she memorized as a young child, and when she aged and her body grew weaker in her last months, I would sometimes sit by her bed and read our favorites to her.
After she passed, we were going through her belongings, and I came across an old box that contained things of hers that I had never seen before. In it was an essay she wrote while at Heart Mountain concentration camp as a teenager.
After sitting with her words for 10 years, letting it sink into my being, it felt right to me to do this collaboration. This collaborative poem includes both phrases / words / themes from her essay as well as my own words.
I see this poem is a way for me to honor ourselves, each other, and the love, struggle, and hope we share over time and space.
look to the mountain
the scene at sunset is full of beauty
always I watch to see the reflections in the windows of the camp buildings
which sometimes look as if they were on fire
slowly the light fades
and for awhile the world has a sort of lonely look
dark cold clouds roll in over the mountains
drawing a curtain over its jagged edges
wind comes from every direction to converge on me
the icy blasts shake the house and rattle the windows
this wind, saturated with the rumbling of
disembodied voices, calls my name
the winter moon makes the outside world look more cold
Heart Mountain really has no heart
always look to the mountain,
and visualize the history of the wandering people
I look to the mountain and remember you,
remember me.
when I turn my eyes to the north I see
the overlapping mountains of the Montana State border
the summit of which is a dreamy land of fairy tales
the sun peeks from behind the veil of clouds
wispy figures dance ever so slightly in the light
as spirits descend from the sky to join us
every change of season, every hour of the day,
transforms the magical hues and shapes of these mountains
it is a gift to be haunted by the ancestors
for perhaps in these precious memories might lie the
upward-pressing seed of rebirth
look to the mountain and see
a lucid yearning to break through this wall of hatred
look to the mountain and know
even after such horrors of human tragedies
⎯ we might hear singing
