131 VIEWS OF FUJI BY HOKUSAI

In woodblock print

a line of indigo scholars

winds around the familiar path

wind has flung open one of their pouches

and rice papers scatter as the others

hold tight to circular hats and point

the sheets cannot be retrieved

some lift high into autumn air

curling out over rice fields

spiriting toward a cottage

at a far turn in the road

on the way to the mountain

Fuji rises, a blue cone

the scholars do not regard it

as their papers escape on the wind

the mountain has been

taken inside them long ago

they no longer remember it is there

in the same way we do,

staring at its dark verticals

and scrolls of snow

they are aware of the mountain

in the same way we remember sometimes

that our skin is our skin

arrested by its definition

as something containing us

Fuji contains the scholars

that is the message of the flowing papers,

their figurative loss