38.  View from Goten-yama at Shinagawa on Tokaido Highway

Like tourists at Taliesin West, these flower-admirers

Walk up through flat stages, through temporary

Tents and awnings, as the trees blossom so ferociously

That we at first mistake them for flowers on branches.

From still-life we go to landscape, and see the trio

Sitting with their boombox next to them, gossiping;

How much like the quiet lines moving cautiously through

The Iris Garden, watching painters watch the deep blues,

And tongues of purple. The kids get a ride, tired after

The steep climb from town. The hillside frames

These visitors, funneling them past the rocks,

Blocking their view of the other big white spectacle,

The one across the bay, in permanent bloom, Mount Fuji.