Eighth Century Horse on Leaf of Handscroll
Tiny threads of rein and bridle look as if added in a later world to arrest his bucking head, to calm his terror-filled eye, white-haloed. He is the very picture of fear and is tethered to a pole so his four feet, levitated for flight, are frozen in time. Could I know what frightens him if this print were more than detail, if the characters of black brush stroke and red pictorial stamps were of my time and language? The story reflected in his eye is mine, though, speaks that moment when all is not as we long held.
Read MoreComings and Goings
My own are scattershot and the neighbors’ flicker and stutter like the lives of diners peering at menus within little squares of light on a passing train. How can I help picturing myself up above in Seat 17A looking out at clouds, myself the size of a baby’s thumbnail on that passenger jet still lifting on its way to Kansas City. Right now I see Steve’s living room lights at 6 a.m. on Sunday, so I wonder if he, the neighbor who wears earphones when he mows, ever gets a day off, and if he is still Steve, the one I knew long ago, or someone new? And do any of them notice my empty...
Read MoreChoices
“…if poets (often lacking God, less often lacking cats)…” – Dan Chiasson I’ve often heard that politicians own dogs and we with creative natures tend towards cats, and I wonder why. Do politicians need clear emotions, eyes filled with slavish devotion or rage on the verge of attack, while we of poetic bent have become accustomed to the blank, disinterested...
Read MoreAnother History of the Bean
Thoreau hoed his 24,750 bean plants from 5 A.M. till noon each day. I cannot say the furry little things are worth the effort, though they have their own charms when Chinese-restaurant green or flavored with bread crumbs and garlicky butter. My mother always warned me against my passion for the slick beans at the top of a newly-opened can, but I’m still here and Thoreau is not. He only lasted 26 months at Walden, and I’m still levering open tins, still savoring those first slick fruits. There are no rules when it comes to...
Read MoreBlack Cherry
Used for jelly and wine, wild cherry syrup for coughs from the bark, the wood red-brown with whitish sapwood, resistant to decay, durable, the small cherries are called drupes, leave yellowed stones. Found in oak hickory woods, not here. I would re-arrange the world this morning, bring the trees walking towards me like Orpheus or MacBeth. Instead the words of those saw-toothed leaves float down about me, and a forest of silent sound swallows the light of here and now. Wild Transitions...
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