Yarrow House

Shopping Street Tanuki-san

       Tanuki is a badger, and in Japanese folktales 
                  a trickster much like Coyote or Raven.

His bamboo garden tools, a few
plants, some plastic bags of soil
sitting on a bench by the door
indicate a shop of sorts.  He sits
in the dim back, an old badger

in his weathered hole.
His white hair’s cropped so close
he looks bald; liver spots
mottle his hands and scalp.
Bulky in an old grey sweater,

baggy pants, tabi and zori,
pendulous lower lip, he’s no Buddha,
just an old tanuki, still at his work.
Maybe it was his father’s shop,
never painted, always open.

Published in Borderlands, Court Street Press, Seattle: 1999

Onetime reproduction for non-resale purposes permitted by the author with the following credit line:  by Judith Yarrow