"and I travel down to sweet Virginia / where my mother don't know my name"

[larryhammer]

Kokinshu #204, author and topic unknown, from a sequence about the insects of autumn:

higurashi no nakitsuru nae ni hi wa kurenu to omou wa yama no kage ni zo arikeru

With the low crying of cicadas at sunset,     the day had ended -- or so I thought, when indeed it was the mountain's shadow.

Even more than most Kokinshu poems, this evokes a picture for me. That it's a mountain shadow is inflected as a discovery, with connotations of surprise (not that the wording didn't otherwise imply this), implying it's a landscape not known by the speaker -- a traveler. So there's the large scale of mountains, and the medium scale of the trees where higurashi chirr with low, crepuscular calls, and near them a single person -- perfect for a screen painting, or an ukiyo-e print, or something modern. He or she could be walking in traditional dress, including one of those large straw hats, or have a motorcycle parked on a road shoulder, as they lean against it (snacking while listening? looking at a map?). Or riding on a local-line train as it passes under a hill. Or ...

Or something evocative. And with a poem.

So far, though, I've been unable to locate any fan-art illustrations of this one. Still, hope slithers eternal.

---L.