clouds - low & textured -
look yet angrier when seen
in the cold river.
Cold River Sky [Haiku]
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Category Archives: poem
Cormorant Patience [Kyōka]
the cormorant,
glistening & dripping,
must air dry
before it’s a bird again;
humans cramp in the pool.
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“There Is a Bird in the Tree” by Kabir [w/ Audio]
On this tree is a bird:
It dances in the joy of life.
No one knows where it is:
And who knows what the burden
Of its music may be?
Where the branches throw a deep shade,
There does it have its nest:
And it comes in the evening
And flies away in the morning,
And says not a word
Of that which it means.
None tell me of this bird
That sings within me.
It is neither coloured nor colourless:
It has neither form nor outline:
It sits in the shadow of love.
It dwells within the Unattainable,
The Infinite, and the Eternal;
And no one marks
When it comes and goes.
Kabir says, “O brother Sadhu!
Deep is the mystery.
Let wise men seek to know
where rests that bird.”
NOTE: This is the translation by Rabindranath Tagore from the 1915 text, One Hundred Poems of Kabir. This is poem #30 (XXX) of that volume.
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Black Crow [Haiku]
Yellow Glade [Haiku]
i follow the light
out of the woods and into
a yellow glade.
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“There was a little girl” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
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Old Wasp Nest [Haiku]
old wasp nest:
looks like the whole hive
hulked its way out.
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Jolt [Senryū]
on a narrow ridge,
covered with fine dust,
my foot slips. I’m awake!
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“Earthly Anecdote” by Wallace Stevens [w/ Audio]
Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma
A firecat bristled in the way.
Wherever they went,
They went clattering,
Until they swerved,
In a swift, circular line,
To the right,
Because of the firecat.
Or until they swerved,
In a swift, circular line,
To the left,
Because of the firecat.
The bucks clattered.
The firecat went leaping,
To the right, to the left,
And
Bristled in the way.
Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes
And slept.
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The Brave One [Haiku]
one hundred birds
startle at my presence;
one eyeballs me.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 