From Tsukiko, While Watching the Moon – Reviewed

Michael L. Utley

I have waited long enough
among midnight forests
and somnolent bamboo groves
the furtive whispers
of pensive yurei
a forlorn supplication
to dissolve further
into the rayless world
of lost souls
to seek the sleep
of bōkyaku

…

You may find the rest of the poem here.

“From Tsukiko, While Watching the Moon”

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Analysis

This poem moves slowly, carrying the weight of someone who has been waiting too long. The speaker is steady but heavy, as if burdened by something unresolved. This isn’t just a personal sorrow—it stretches into something mythic. The speaker isn’t simply grieving; they are unmaking themselves. The poem follows that process, moving from longing to detachment to an ultimate rejection of self.

It begins in a world of spirits. Yūrei whisper in the bamboo groves, restless and unresolved. The speaker lingers among them, already half-dissolved into their world. There is no urgency, only a quiet pull toward disappearing. The mention of bōkyaku—forgetfulness—suggests a deeper loss, not just of life but of memory itself. The surrounding imagery adds to this feeling of in-between: reeds swaying, koi dreaming in the depths, kitsune slipping through the shadows. These creatures exist on the edges of things—between land and water, between human and spirit, between real and unreal. The speaker belongs in this limbo, not quite alive, not fully gone.

Then comes the red footbridge. In Japanese tradition, bridges mark the passage between worlds—between the mundane and the sacred, between the living and the dead. But this one is abandoned, leading to nothing. A ghost in a world of ghosts. The speaker stands before it, but there is nowhere to go. Beyond the bridge, emptiness. There is no sense of transition, no promise of what lies ahead, just the remains of something lost long ago. The past has been reduced to a buried memory, “the bones of a life once lived / once lost / forever regretted.” There is no reclaiming it.

The stars appear next, spinning above. They are ancient, unmoving, indifferent. They do not guide, they do not witness, they simply exist. The speaker sees them as proof of futility, a reminder that nothing matters in the vastness of time and space. This is where the poem expands outward, away from the personal and into something cosmic. There is no comfort in the stars, no answers waiting among them. They are only distant, untouchable, turning in their endless cycles.

When the moon arrives. The tone shifts. The speaker speaks directly to it, and there is bitterness here, rejection, accusation. The moon is not a gentle presence. It is arrogant, cruel, casting cold light but offering nothing in return. It watches, but it does not see. The speaker resists its pull, but at the same time, there is an obsession. A history. The scars mentioned—whether real or metaphorical—hint at wounds the moon either caused or refused to acknowledge. The speaker accuses it of judgment, of betrayal, of deciding fates without mercy.

And then the revelation. The speaker was named Tsukiko—moon-child. The connection to the moon is not imagined; it was given to them at birth. They have spent their life watching the moon, waiting for something—recognition, acknowledgment, the simple warmth of its light. But the moon has given nothing. The speaker’s waiting has been in vain. And now, they are done.

The final lines reject everything. “I am Tsukiko no more.” The speaker renounces the name, the identity, the connection to the moon. They let go of their longing, their sorrow, their need for recognition. This is the final break. Whatever the moon once meant to them, whatever power it held, is gone.

This is not a triumphant moment. There is no resolution, no transformation, no rebirth. Just the quiet acceptance that what they waited for will never come. The spirits, the river, the foxes, the bridge, and the moon—all things that should have led the speaker somewhere—only confirm that they are lost. The usual ideas of fate, karma, or belonging are absent. Instead, the poem ends with emptiness, with a final step into nothing at all.

Photo by Drew Easley on Unsplash