Day 24 - 2.19.2013

Aokigahara Jukai

Honshu Island King,
Mt Fuji guards the entrance:
Forest of the Damned.

Sleeping at the foot of a Japanese volcano is an ancient forest of convoluted trees,
with knees bent up, like benches, but there are few who care to sit.
They who journey here seek eternal sleep.

Midst sleeping trees
Aokigahara waits:
she knows they will come.

Train station at the end of the line, lined with mirrors to remind travelers that they can,
indeed, be seen: they are not, yet, the invisible ones. The intent journey from across
the waters to seek their own redemption lost in the evergreen and beech trees
whose roots are gnarled above the volcanic ground, oft times obscuring hidden caves.

Buy your ribbons - like
breadcrumbs should you change
your mind; opt to live.

Called Black Sea of Trees, there are many places therein where sunlight doesn’t penetrate;
leaving the wanderer, in many ways, in darkness. Apollo butterflies glow in the shadows,
but only rarely does the song of bird burst forth. They says that the souls of the dead linger here.

White draped Yurei waft
through rope tied boughs where the
dead hang in mid scream.

For here, it is the hempen way, where elsewhere, by the golden bridge, it is a short flight to
drowning in the uneasy waters of the bay. Signs at the entrance to the forest urge rethinking,
but the majority are past reading, care not for warnings or turning back. Still, they leave their
pretty ribbons behind to flutter in the breeze, to entice someone to follow. Along the way, they
who go to die shed their belongings. One can stumble across wallets scavenged by the living,
moldering photographs, a pairs of glasses for who wants to truly see what lies ahead?

Occasional notes
Penned in desperate attempt
To explain, perhaps?

Perhaps once a year, the hundred or so bodies are collected. They are beyond caring
if their bones are moved. Still, the essence of Aokigahara, the somber beauty of the forest
at Mt Fugi’s feet sends out its siren’s call. It heeds no boundary, for it is where the border
is but a gauzy wisp of dreams.

The are no answers
In Aokigahara:
The dead won’t answer.