Beneath Mount Fuji’s Weeping Pines explores the haunting beauty and silent sorrow of Aokigahara, the infamous Suicide Forest. At the foot of Japan’s iconic mountain, this poem uncovers the tragic, quiet tales hidden among the dense trees. With reverence for both life and death, it tries to paint a picture of a place where the natural world and human despair converge, and where the forest itself holds whispers of lost souls. A hopefully poignant meditation on the fragility of existence and the weight of unspoken stories, it invites reflection on the hidden struggles that often go unnoticed.
 

Beneath the peak of Fuji's height,
The trees stand still, in quiet night.
A breath of air, a sigh, a hush,
In Aokigahara's mournful crush.

 

The earth is soft, the leaves are thick,

Where souls may tread, both frail and sick.

In silence deep, where footsteps fall,

The forest speaks without a call.

 

A tangled web of life and death,

Where hollow hearts find their last breath.

The weight of sorrow, thick as fog,

Wraps in the branches, a soft, cruel log.

 

But here, the wind does not forget,

It whispers names of those who wept.

And though the pines remain unseen,

They hold the quiet, lost between.

 

A fleeting hope, a flickered flame,

The forest hides the secret name.

Not every soul that walks this way

Desires to end the light of day.

 

In veils of night, where dusk is sewn,

A tale unfolds, both deep and grown.

A place where all things intertwine—

A forest lost, a life, a sign.