We crossed Mount Unohana and Kurikara Valley at noon on the fifteenth day of the seventh moon and entered Kanazawa, there we took rooms at an inn with a merchant from Osaka, a Mr. Kansho, who was in town to attend memorial services for the haiku poet Issho, […]
After all the breathtaking views of rivers and mountains, lands and seas, after everything we’d seen, thoughts of seeing Kisakata’s famous bay still made my heart begin to race. Twenty miles north of Sakata Harbor, as we walked the sandy shore beneath mountains where sea winds wander, a […]
A little anxious, thinking of the Shirakawa Barrier, thinking on it day by day; but calmed my mind by remembering the old poem, “somehow sending word home.” I walked through heavy green summer forests. Many a poet inscribed a few words at one of the Three Barriers–“Autumn Winds” […]
We arrive at our niece’s house for her daughter’s 3rd birthday party—early. Mira wants to “hug the babies”—our newborn great niece and nephew, both of whom will be there. She had hoped to have them to herself. When we pull up to the house, however, a Nissan Altima […]
What was it like, Francis? To experience the wounds of Christ? How did you do it? You were another noble-aspiring Merchant’s son, fighting for Assisi in another of the Italian city-states endless wars. Was it the illness you endured during your captivity? Did that brush with death open […]
Husband, Father, Writer, Teacher. American Haijin. Because Haikai matters!
Frank J. Tassone 