2013 Tokyo Station (东京駅) In Retrospect
Gerard Sarnat
It's a metro-dystopia of the Fritz Lang film variety,
less vintage sepia than bleak (what's hid in each black suit's black brief case?)
except for white surgical masks and the trusting rows of unlocked bikes.
Breath of cypress camouflaging smog and presumed bird flu, past swanned moats,
ancient sentry gates, through emerald parks toward the Emperor’s palace
is the Shelter For People Who Cannot Go Back Home. A local girl
who holds hands with a Black man lures stares from yellow crones perched on benches.
…How seven years later, what appeared then as just bizarro to us naïve travelers
unaware of the SARS pandemic threat in Japan seven years before our visit
with prudent citizens using packed public transportation daily -- suddenly makes sense
to a couple of equally-masked elder Americans at risk of Coronavirus.
Gerard Sarnat has been nominated for the pending Science Fiction Poetry Association Dwarf Star Award, won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in 2023 San Diego Poetry Annual, 2022 Awakenings Review, 2022 Arts & Cultural Council of Bucks County Celebration, and other presses. He is a Harvard College and Medical School-trained physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the disenfranchised as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with progeny consisting of four collections (Homeless Chronicles: From Abraham To Burning Man, Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King) plus three kids/ six grandsons — and is looking forward to potential future granddaughters.
