Akira Kurosawa’s Dream Mills

By Sarah Riggs

Mid–dream, turning turns
Yellow, white, red blossoms plucked
Placed on a long rock, child by child

Rivulets of light in the turbulent stream
Strands of green swaying growths
Mossy hair tickling the surface

A young traveler crosses the footbridge
Sees the children, the ritual blooms —
Pauses, observes, smiles

Is Kurosawa dreaming himself ?

He arrives at a destination
Another man (also Kurosawa?)
full of wrinkles, his hands
worked in and by the sun

He is 103. The film — the dreams —
come out in 1990. I saw them first on
a VHS tape in the mid–nineties in
Rockland County

Now it’s 2024, Metrograph Theater Manhattan

We are watching the mills turn —
We are hearing them. It could
be Van Gogh’s time

The mills are like film reels
turning and turning with the stream
this too a technology

We are inside one of his dreams

He — the elder — imparts wisdom

The village is out of time —
No need for electricity
Cow dung is good for fuel

Wanting convenience, the new,
we forget we’re part of nature
We’ll perish, humans

But he darts up at the sounds
Of a march — a lost love — his youth
halting — the music and movements

Decorated hats, kimonos, shared gestures
Cascades of people in ceremony
Synchronicity in the funeral —

Actually it’s good to be alive
To live long and be thanked

The young man places a red flower
on the rock, watches the watermills churning
and crosses back over the listening stream