Category Archives: Poetry

“Finely Woven” [Poetry Style #14] by Sikong Tu [w/ Audio]

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The building blocks of everything --
   Too fine to feel or see or smell --
 Dance their way into hardened shapes
   Via forces, invisible.
 And so water flows, flowers bud,
   But - also - dew evaporates.
 This expansive path stretches on --
   It's slow-going through dark lands.
 It can't be spoken of smartly.
 It can't be pondered fruitfully.
 It's Early Spring green in sunlight,
   Or like the snow seen by moonlight.

NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry. It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a translation of the fourteenth of the twenty-four poems. Translated titles vary: Giles calls it “Close Woven” and others have titled it, “Fine.”

Biblical Skies [Free Verse]

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I can see the Bible stories 
   writ in these skies
   as I pass through
   ancient parts.

Slant shafts of light spill
   through the clouds,
   angling toward some 
   blessed soul.

I can see distant clouds --
   fringed in curls --
   as if painted upon
   a cathedral ceiling. 

Clouds that display the depth
   of an artist's skill and
   eye for perspective,
   but not true depth.
   (They seem too distant for that;
      they're too real to be real.)

And I look up again out of the window
   and am blinded by light
   that has pierced thick clouds,
   and I wonder whether anyone is
   seeing this light shaft bless me.

“Inversnaid” by Gerard Manley Hopkins [w/ Audio]

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This darksome burn, horseback brown,
 His rollback highroad roaring down,
 In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
 Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
 Turns and twindles over the broth
 Of a pool so pitchblack, fell frowning,
 It rounds and rounds Despair and drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
 Are the groins of the braes that the brook threads through.
 Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
 And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
 Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
 O let them be left, wildness and wet;
 Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Split Personality [Haiku]

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yellow & purple 
 pansies draw butterflies,
  bees, & photogs.

Happy Fungi [Haiku]

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the forest floor
 is damp and dark, and
  mushrooms are happy.

Flash Flood [Haiku]

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with days of rain,
 the lake overflows its bank
  to carve a creek.

“Beginning My Studies” by Walt Whitman [w/ Audio]

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Beginning my studies, the first step pleas'd me so much,
 The mere fact, consciousness -- these forms -- the power of motion,
 The least insect or animal -- the senses -- eyesight -- love;
 The first step, I say, aw'd me and pleas'd me so much,
 I have hardly gone, and hardly wish'd to go, any further,
 But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in ecstatic songs.

Kailasa of Ellora [Blank Verse]

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They carved a temple in a mountainside,
   Cutting away all rock that wasn't temple,
 Chipping from the top down and outside-in,
   Until some domed stone segregated sky
 From inner sanctum and all its idols, 
   And it has stood over twelve hundred years,
 And it will surely stand twelve hundred more,
   But someday it'll be a mountain again.

The Spring Thickens [Haiku]

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Spring has arrived!
 the view from glade to glade
  through woods, is no more.

Forensic Psychologist’s Limerick

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There once was a forensic psychologist
 Who came across as quite the apologist:
   "The arsonist, you see,
   Simply yearns to be free --
 Hence, burning all the walls - if you get my gist."