the morning dew smiles
the rising sun stares deeply
later a merger
the egret stands fixed
wishing he was a statue
the rippling pond laughs
clouds blacken the sky
the sun plays hide and go seek
we watch patiently.
winter is lurking
but swaying palms reject it
it retreats northward
He liked nothing better
then to sit outside
his small cottage
and stare into the pond
once the blaze on the water
set by the sun was consumed
as fire must always be by water.
As night deepened, he stared
into the sky, seeing the moon
slowly rise, chasing along
the sun’s now deserted path.
He knew the myriad of stars
shared his interest, staring
but he abandoned the sky
as the sun had yet again,
and watched as the voracious pond
slowly consumed the ever
fewer stars, and saw the pond’s
moon take up its liquid
dance to the tune of the night breeze
He is for it or he is
against it, and if you could
predict the vacillations you
could develop the means
of measuring the flux of sanity.
You could as easily grasp
the water flowing downriver
and by asking select questions
determine the next heavy rain,
but the odds are good
you will be outside when
the deluge begins, and
only its ultimate weight
and duration remain to be felt.
It all comes down to the same
thing, if you could paint the sky
blue, precisely which shade
of blue would you use and why
that one for heaven’s sake
Nature has a way of applying
a perfect logic that eludes
its most complex creatures,
we claiming to be first among them.
Nature grants the housefly
a quite short life, but allows it
to see a thousand images at once,
a lifetime of vision in mere days.
The tortoise is consigned to crawl
along at a laggard’s pace, outrun
by other animals, who will be in
their graves in a tortoise’s middle age.
Birds must muck in the soil
for sustenance, or hunt small
creatures aground, but they have
the ample sky for a home.
Humans, well we have no such
luck, blind to all around us, rushing
always headlong into death, and only
dreaming of being free from earth’s grip.
The sun rose this morning,
as if the day were not in any
way out of the ordinary, day
number far too large to count
for those with finite capacity.
The birds begin, their harmonious
cacophony, though they think
it their lauds, matins of reflection
burned off with the dew under
the gentle glare of a morning sun.
They watch us begin to stir,
imagine how it must be to live
cocooned in oddly symmetrical
boxes, venturing out but retreating
as though the sky was to be feared.
They do not ask how we could
so easily, remorselessly, lay waste
to our shared home, for they
have moved past mourning,
as we remain mired still in denial.
First appeared in The Poet: A New World, Autumn 2020
The sun is shining brightly today,
and the sky, with only the odd
passing cloud, is that certain blue.
Do not ask me to describe that certain
blue, but be assured it is not exactly
the blue that you are imagining right now.
Even if I would describe it, in some
infinite detail, your vision of it
would at best be a near approximation.
The gull that swooped in and stole
the crust of bread I overtoasted
this morning knew exactly what the blue was.
Birds generally, and gulls in particular
have deep understanding of blue
that you, my friends, cannot even imagine.
I remember the cherry trees
along the reflecting pool, though
except in April they mostly reflected
a partially clouded sky promising rain.
Their pinkness was a tone I have
searched for since, and came
closest in Tokyo, jealous of the emperor
and his gardens so carefully tended.
It is that time again, and this year
as in so many past, I will not see
my reflection in the city of my birth,
nor the pink rain that falls slowly
in April’s first strong breeze, I
will not scoop up a handful of pink
and cast it into the sky, only to fall
yet again, to the joy of a nearby child.
I will dream of Tokyo, of the two trees
In a corner of Senso-ji, alight in pink
under the always watchful eye
of Buddha and the smiling jizos.
Its plump, dusty-white feathered body
sits atop the pond like an inverted
iceberg, as the lindens fringing the field
shed their seeds onto the hardened soil.
The swan lumbers across the surface
with no particular urgency or direction
slowed by the entropy of a late August afternoon,
the laughed shouts of children
plunging headlong to dinner,
diverted to bathrooms
for the cursory sprinkling
of unholy water,
the beast drags its haunches
upward
straining against the gravity
of too many
moments pecking the grains
cast at it by the children.
Its head breaks the surface of the pond
and inches downward in through the green
glaze until snatching its target
at the end of the allotted moment,
like the child’s toy with its colored fluid,
it swings back up on its axis,
and inches away, its dive complete.
The young boy climbs gingerly aboard
the rusty metal seat, a lattice of
peeling enamels, telling the years
as rings of trees, and drops the bar
across his lap, a wave to cousins
denying the tingle in his bowels
as the wheel begins its rhythmic
interrupted rotation, and the sky
summer gray, approaches.
The wheel turns slowly,
the cacophony of little girls
rings false against the fading note
of a carousel.
He rocks gently, mindful not to lean
into the baleful eye of the operator,
and glances down counting those
awaiting their moments until
he hears the grating of metal
and he slides to the side,
as his cage
begins to dangle, the bar greased
by the sweated palms of a rider,
and then the shriek of agony
torn loose from somewhere beneath
his riveted eyes
fixed on the asphalt
rushing to break him.
He lifts his arms out
vainly searching
for the genetic memory of flight.
He strikes with the sound of the plastic
barrel striking a pier, his dive complete.
First Appeared in Twilight Ending, May 1999.
I want the sky to be that certain crimson
tinged with burnt sienna and cinnabar,
but today winter is holding sway
and the sun sneaks off behind
the gray wall from which it only peeked,
and left the day one of grayscale
where intensity replaced beauty
and even the cardinal opted to stay
high in the spruce, offering
only an occasional glint of red.
We come to expect this, it is a season
of colorlessness, and the only question
is whether we can hold out
until spring returns the full pallette
and nature takes up brush again.
In the end, it always comes down to night,
regardless of the moon, if any, it’s faint light
drowned by the city’s oppressive glow,
headlights, streetlights and once,
spotlights painting the sky, traceable
down to that new place we don’t wish
or can’t afford, would never dare to go.
Death is omnipresent, his shadow is at least,
but at night he has greater freedom of movement
his reaches longer, less random
and we claim not to fear the night, the sun
assumes we mourn its absence, and this
is true at some level beyond our comprehension,
but it isn’t the dark, that is their origin and
destination, it’s the hour at which we
cede control, and that, like the roller-
coaster in freefall, is what we so deeply fear
