I wanted  
to be beautiful and wise—
I wanted adjectives.   
 
Other girls chose nouns— 
—a nurse, a nun, someone
in uniform, 
 
but I feared, 
if I became a noun, I’d be
a bad one— Nurse? Bad.
Poet? Worse.
 
Instead, I planned to take a job, 
not too hard, maybe
as a wise museum guard—
 
Then I’d quit and try
something harder,
like beautifully walking dogs.
 
I might get good at that,
then quit again and try to model
or to swim the Channel,
 
though I’d need different adjectives
for that. 
And I forgot 
 
to mention happy. I was thinking  
it might come 
with the first two.
(This wasn’t wise.)  
 
And beautiful? 
One morning, I awoke—
I was grown-up.
I was beautiful.

Everybody was.

                        (for Malcolm) 
 
The year the film was made
was the year you were born. 
I have wished, ever since I saw it, 
that the people were you and me.

A weary man carries an old woman 
on his shoulders through the brambles. 
She will no longer be living in the village.
They must ascend the sacred mountain.
 
She weighs little, but he is weary
with the thought that he must leave her
on the mountain in a patch of fallen leaves, 
cross-legged, peering through the brambles.
 
She won’t be in the village 
with the others, but on the mountain
where the snowfall is a blessing.
The man is weary. Narayama
 
is the name of the mountain 
and  the song heard along the path
up to the clearing 
where he has to leave her 
 
cross-legged, smiling at the snowfall 
and the brambles. He will be alone 
on the path when he turns to see her 
peering through the snow.
 
She’ll be waving him away, 
smiling at broad shoulders disappearing 
along the trail leading down
the mountain of Narayama.