Holy Water

For Toshie Osanami

Bright rays reflect, shape, shake her portrait on the water skin
      and it’s broken, burnt, soon gone.

The urn of her ashes in a little temple in ages
       almost forgotten, not-harked back.

Her mysteries and strangeness have been told, untold
       forming a tapestry of tales

and some lost, some being gems in recollections
       of monks chanting out sutras

who have imagined her life and admired her miracles
       that cured and healed the body and soul.

Sealed tall bottles were empty, but once with her unseen
       power, all the bottles

full of clear liquid that was authentic as if like water
       of Lourdes apparitions

however, without apparitions of the Virgin Mary,
       without sacraments.

She cured pains and ills, removed evils by her sacred water
       in ecstasy of mystical

contact and offered her love to any sick person,
       there, the scent of a lotus flower.

Hideko Sueoka is a poet and translator living in Tokyo. Her translation on photography “Shigeichi Nagano-Magazine Work 60s” was published in 2009. Her debut poetry chapbook was published from Clare Songbirds Publishing House (New York State, US) in 2018. Her poems will be published in forthcoming magazines Best Asian Poetry 2021, Stand Magazine, and more. She edited a poetry book “DOWSING” by a poet and translator William I. Elliott. Her interest is traveling and bird watching.

Find her on Twitter or on her blog: CHEERFUL NOISE as in a poem.