Jukai, Sea Of Trees

• Jing Hua Ang, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2015

By this I knew she slept with waking eyes:
That, at her hand's light quiver by her head,
The sugar sadness that shook the bed
Were murmured to her with a sharp surprise,
The tapes yellow, curled like gaping snakes,
Amidst electric green and violence. She lay
Stone still, and the long darkness flowed away
With reverence and humbleness. Then, as eve wakes
Canopied by the thickest forest, her ears
Heard the epidemic of sadness, and so beat
Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
By rapture, her epitaph praised the seraph.
Like sculptured tombs they might be seen
Upon her shrine, the hammer and nail in between;
A thick haze coiled the peak of Mount Fuji.