Daryl Muranaka

Rebirth

You come to a place that is waiting
to be reborn, to be useful again, to be
alive after the storm has taken it all away.
You can imagine the power of the wind,
as you drive along the country highway,
you see some trees felled, some exploded,
one gift-wrapped with corrugated roofing.
Whole fields of sugar leveled flat, dead and dying.
A house missing a roof and the second floor
with only half a closet and a dress remaining.
This place, once covered only with green,
rich and alive like a garden in spring,
now turning brown, the red dirt exposed.
This would make anyone wonder if life ever returns.

But earth rests.
The lost crops enforce a fallow season.
Sometimes a little destruction
is good for the soul. It’s time to slow down.
The memory of the storms fades. The green rises.
The brown branches of the tree tunnel explode
alive and shades the road from the ever-summer sun.
This is the world that you come into, to live in.
The promise that death gives way to life,
that the end of something precious grows,
transforms into the new flowers, the new life,
the new chances tempered by our disappointments.

Daryl Muranaka lives in Somerville, MA and works down the street at a university by the river. He contemplates his seven year sojourn on the East Coast after wandering up and down his native West Coast with side stops to France and Japan, among other locales. His poems have appeared in the Hawai`i Review, Bamboo Ridge, Clackamas Literary Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and Poetry East. He enjoys watching a good baseball game and a solid meal at the nearby pub.