Deeply touched by the famous pine at Takekuma, twin trunks just as long ago… reported to have been cut down and replaced several times, it stood like a relic of a thousand years, impossibly perfect. The poet Kyohaka had given me a poem at my departure:

remember to show my master

the famous Takekuma pine,

O northern blossoming cherries

To which I now reply:

Ever since cherry blossom time

I longed to visit the famous split pine:

three long months have passed

Basho, “Narrow Road to the Interior” translated by Sam Hamill, The Essential Basho, p. 13

Thirty years

since I saw

Binghamton maples

my son’s first college tour

along with my nostalgia