Yuki In Albuquerque

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Yuki In Albuquerque
By Dennis Holt

Indians wanting to know:
this stranger among them
hair long & black like theirs.
They corner him there
as he steps off an Albuquerque bus
& in the men's room at Okie's bar.
Where are you from?
Why do you travel with the bearded wasichu?

And in minimal English
he lets them know
that he is not at all Indian,
but Japanese.

They did see something there though:
an ancient kinship
still embodied there
in the tone of his skin,
the jet of his hair,
the cast of his eyes & face,
even in his bearing perhaps:
vestigial signs of a common race.

Something there
the westerly moving whiteman lost
or never managed to find.