at the torii

Clad in robes of red,
two kitsune flank the gate.
High above their watch,
a crow lands upon the stone,
knowing nothing of the gods.

Today, I'd like to share a waka, a traditional Japanese poem composed of thirty-one syllables (5-7-5-7-7).

It was inspired by what I saw at a small shrine at Fushimi Inari. On either side of the shrine sit two kitsune (foxes), dressed in bright red bibs. In Shinto tradition, they serve as the messengers and guardians of Inari, the kami associated with rice, prosperity, and abundance. Their watch is directed toward the torii, the gate itself. In Shinto, a torii marks the line between the ordinary world and the one where kami live, a word usually translated as god or spirit, though it stretches wider than either.

But here's the detail that undid me a little: torii is often read, quite literally, as "bird perch," from tori, meaning bird, and i, to rest or dwell. One old telling has it that birds were placed on wooden roosts outside a cave to help call the sun goddess Amaterasu back into the world. So my indifferent crow, understanding nothing, caring less, was quietly doing exactly what the gate's own name has meant for centuries.

That might be the most Shinto thing about the whole scene. This is a tradition that has never fully separated the sacred from the natural world; kami are said to live in mountains, rivers, old trees, and stones.

At first, I thought the crow represented indifference. But the longer I looked, the more it seemed to embody something else: innocence.

With this thought, the waka can be rewritten as follows:

Red upon the fox,
stone raised for the hidden god.
Above every prayer,
a crow settles on the peak,
never knowing where it sits.