“An ingenious floor, clamped and nailed in place: walking on it caused friction between the nails and their clamps, emitting the giveaway sounds. There was no way to move silently on it and it had been the shoguns’ warning against spies and assassins.”
—Marshall Browne, Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn
Pressure anywhere
betrays betrayal: a
thousand birds awaken
from their sleep as nails.
Not patience nor
persuasion nor
dark of night
nor black costume
nor other steps taken
go an inch toward
getting past that floor
and at the shogun
who lives within his rooms
as upon an island
in the middle of a
polished wooden sea
so tuned to treachery
that sometimes
just the heat of sunlight
is misread as feet.
—Kay Ryan
Kay Ryan’s sixth book of poems is TheNiagara River, from Grove Press. She lives in Northern California.
