Toshiaki Komura

AS IT RAINS IN THE STREET

Anywhere from days of bright red
to memories of light blue, hydrangea
shifts colors: the rain's caprice.
And in my caprice,

thoughts fluctuate: a clustered multiple,
like two travelers in a cabin
where one's fallen silent, or
a waking self realizing that he's a mere

70% of him, having been startled
out of the sleeping self's self-dream.
As footfalls toll I feel

the urge to return to the inorganic: no theory
elucidates, even as the soil--its
acidity and alkalinity--explains hydrangea's.

Toshiaki Komura completed his MFA at Cornell University in 2002, and is presently working toward a Ph.D. in English Literature at University of Michigan, writing a dissertation on modern elegy. His work has appeared or will be forthcoming in Evansville Review, Quercus Review, River Oak Review, Sycamore Review, Willow Review, among others.