32 exquisite Japanese dolls moveable joints
eyelids lowered in modesty skins pale lucid porcelain

You won't find them on the shelf
of an exclusive
   Import Emporium
in a Major City

Look through windows
of a classroom
see them
   fitted into small desks
no kimonos white faces hairpins
tradition replaced
  by oversize sweaters mini-skirts
   Canada Western World
they are here
to absorb culture
  to fetch a higher price.

These moons in purdah
   picot clouds raven hair
   filtered across rosebud lips
never stare
tongues falter in mid-sentence.

I want to teach them
more than literature
they giggle at shake heads searching meaning
within virginal embroidered cover of tight dictionaries

but six weeks are not enough
like trying to dent an obelisk.

A ski trip slip and slide
wind whittles a current
around bright cheeks
and flakes fall on lashes,
perfect as silver stars-cutouts
made from the mischief of clouds.

They are crocuses in February
laughter echoing in hollow valleys
porcelain snowbirds with clipped wings
chameleons in Western clothes
and make up.

Ideals spill from a faltering tongue
pithless maxims
Harlequin romances
furs, cars and houses
imagined husbands in stretch limousines,
riding high above a Canadian landscape
skis swinging
to the bowl of a mountain
frothy white with the whipping of snow.

Back home, "marriage is happiness"
    "happiness is marriage"
interchangeable slogans
worn in the throat while

women empty alcohol behind closed
doors and
men fill condoms
thrust into foreign wombs on stage
line up each night a public
display of masculinity.

These Japanese children are
dolls kept
under glass kept
ignorant kept
for sale.

If only they'd return a decade later
and show how they mastered the slopes.