Wide-Awake City Poetry is what makes sure we are awake.

A guy named Kenneth Rexroth translated a whole slew of short poems from Japanese in his cleverly titled book, "One Hundred Poems from the Japanese."

I love how much these writers crammed into a few words.   Lots of talk of memory, waiting, changing seasons, and of course, nature images.  Spring ties all these things together -- how do the trees remember what to do?  What would we do without the seasons to mark the time? 

Here are a few good ones:

In the eternal
Light of the spring day
The flowers fall away
Like the unquiet heart
 -Ki No Tomonori

You say, "I will come."
And you do not come.
Now you say, "I will not come."
So I shall expect you.
Have I learned to understand you?
-Lady Otomo no Sakanoe

When I see the first
New moon, faint in the twilight,
I think of the moth eyebrows
Of a girl I saw only once.
-Yakamochi

I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.
-Narihira