I am an expat in my own country—a U. S. citizen now living in North Hollywood with my granddaughter and her three children near my older daughter (the other living near Boston), my son-in-law, his sister, and my nephew—but feeling no more at home in America than I did in Japan, where I lived in Osaka, Nagoya, Chiba, and Yokohama and taught at universities for twenty years, and where my beloved wife lives and teaches in her native country and our son in Tokyo (born in Michigan) performs classical and jazz cello.

Wherever I am I am almost as alienated (though not an alien) as the Martian hero of Heinlein’s science fiction masterpiece STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. Like the expatriated literary geniuses James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, and others, I cannot feel truly at home in my so-called home country or anywhere else. But even worse than their alienation, mine is such that I do not feel that I live on the same planet where I was born, for neither air nor earth, people nor even nature is as it was when I was born 81 years ago, for Gaia is dying!

In this blog, I will explore this problem, which you, Dear Reader, may feel as well as I or know others who do. Below is a glimpse at the alienated depths of myself (or lack thereof) in an excerpt from “In Woods as Dark as I” in NONZEN POEMS. But after it I quote a life-enhancing autobiographical poem not in my latest book.

I am grateful to Joe Zanghi, who befriended me, co-edited, and published my best book of poetry last fall, and Akemi Shinohara for creating the enchanting cover. I miss my many friends in Japan, Japanese and others. who struggle to make the best of their estrangement. As for my new and old friends in America, they too struggle to endure alienation politically, sexually, romantically, religiously, aethetically (including entertainment and dining), and in other ways that I will frequently write about herein. I will welcome email sent to me at nonzenpoet@mac.com

IN WOODS AS DARK AS I

I look at myself as a stranger
looks at a stranger he suspects
of suspecting him of suspicions
watching him enter the woods
at evening and disappear.

Now that I have been looked at
suspiciously I might speak
as if I had something to say
beyond suspicions, smiling,
as if I were not lost in the woods.
(continued on page 39 of NONZEN POEMS)

MORGAN

Morgan am I
from Welsh sea-dwellers
Breton mermaids
Irish moon-goddesses
Celtic mirages

and Fata Morgana
of many forms, many lovers
sorceress-healer
bearing world-treasure
from womb-caves in the sea:

the son of singing
Mary Elizabeth
(mothers of Jesus and
John the Baptist)
enchantress of children and

daughter of Clay
Morgan Leeper
(sorceress-healer
of babies and lilies
leaper of faith).

George Morgan Gibson
am I, the last
son of sons of the
protesting Word of
George who stabbed the dragon.

All in the name that I am.