Old times, almost, an ocean away. The steep-sided mountains,
Their lush coats of trees, the fast-moving rivers, the hidden
Volcano. So like what I knew in the land where I grew up,
But there, there were dairies and loggers, and here, instead,
Plots of wasabi and tea. With dinner, fried fish, both familiar
And good, and some skewers of chicken; potatoes, deep-fried,
But not sliced up and naked, breaded beforehand and brought
To us whole; radishes, lotus roots, and that wasabi; nothing like
What we ate most of the time in that yesterday land on the eastern
Pacific, beneath what those visiting thought was a rumor:
The volcano no one could see.