A Recent Conversation With My Grandmother, By AMY UYEMATSU

When I wake up in middream

or find myself humming

a melody with no sharps or flats,

I know I’ve been outside of this time.

If only I could speak with obachan,

not be groping inside this buried place

for the carelessly thrown out

language of immigrants,

only two generations

since leaving Shizuoka.

She knew I would go back to Izu peninsula,

climb the slopes of Omuro-yama

with my mother’s cousin,

the wind slapping my hair

hard against my face,

no sound from the ocean below

as the wind moans

through the long mountain grass.

*

I can’t say the words.

We gave up a language well suited to farmers

and poets, its rhythm uneven with

brush strokes and pause.

It holds sound inside picture

with a thousand possibilities for

shadow and light.

*

Instead I must use

these words with no memory.

From “30 Miles From J-Town” (Story Line Press: $11.95; 104 pp.). Amy Uyematsu is a third-generation Californian of Japanese ancestry: sansei. She lives in Los Angeles. 1992 by Amy Uyematsu. Reprinted by permission.