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The Pond

To suffer one's death and to be
reborn is not easy.

—Frederick Perls

 

The waning moon rises just
ahead of morning.

Will loss deepen all day,
regret shape the graying clouds?

Willow catkins drift, earth
listens to its lord.

…

Sunlight broken by leafy alders
spangles the path— burnishes

the tip of a pine needle drawn
by a one-hair brush on the sky.

…

What you want
may not sit with you at the table

but there is a white barn across the valley
full of many things—

iron tools, rope halter, rag, dusty
shafts of light.

…

Little sparrow, my breath of soul
makes brief flights and hops.
I too carry weeds in my mouth.

Emperor Hadrian hoped to enter death
with eyes open as I've seen
your brothers do.

Maybe we'll recognize the way
and meet at the threshold among those
we love for millions of days.

…

A snowy egret in the reeds,
utterly still, turtles in the gloom—

if that's a catfish down there,
it had more than a mile to walk

from the North Fork River.

…

I carried my heart hell and gone
for thrilling moments—

placed in other hands,
it grew heavier.

The old frog seems content
in his wet spot—

he blinks, and his pores go on seeing.

…

Today, I am
the gypsy knife,
tomorrow the wound,
but the knife
is also weeping
in torment.

…

The shadow of a vulture
passes through a flock of red-winged

blackbirds foraging—they rise
and settle back, their koto strummed.

…

Autumn light arrives
and a few clouds,

feathery, like the nuptial plumage
of a Great White Egret.

The ungraspable blue, lifting
two hawks above Grass Mountain

this evening, offers a faint
star to anyone at all.

…