On a blue morning, no trust
to be found for September weather
on account of wondering what is
trust and what is just
—just and safe or just safe—whether
or not a quality, whether or not
a state where justice lives.
Both are finally inmost, a warning,
that there exists unjust.
Or, in one’s room, not just
the garage or attic, maybe just
the shower-stall’s warming
spray from now-rusted
plumbing. Yes,
in the public sphere, trust
abides in weather not climate—
what will keep us warm
and not hot or lukewarm.
Though my blood is trusted weather,
tell me, now, what is just alarming?
Kimiko Hahn is the author of ten books of poetry, including Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020). Her previous works include The Artist’s Daughter (2004) and The Narrow Road to the Interior (2008). She is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York. She received her MA in Japanese literature from Columbia in 1984. She is the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award. (updated 4/2022)