Asleep on a leaf beneath lotus blooms,
Their fragrance floats across the misty lake.
Sudden rain - taps upon the canopy;
Its sound snaps me from sleep to wide awake!
The lotus is beaded with rain droplets --
Like pearls, drops roll together and apart;
The clear blobs coalesce like mercury,
Dripping to the river... back to their start.
hazy valley:
stubble fire smoke glows like
a Martian landscape.
A horde of sunflowers
Grows on thin stalks
With big, bright heads
That tilt chin-upwards.
Could they stand so tall
And proudly if they weren't
Packed against each other?
When one bitch-slaps a sunflower,
One expects its head to fly
Clean off, but it just does
An angry little head bobble,
And goes about its business,
Looking skyward...
Though - occasionally - one breaks
Into a sad nod.
This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond --
Invisible, as Music --
But positive, as Sound --
It beckons, and it baffles --
Philosophy, dont know --
And through a Riddle, at the last --
Sagacity, must go --
To guess it, puzzles scholars --
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown --
Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies --
Blushes, if any see --
Plucks at a twig of Evidence --
And asks a Vane, the way --
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit --
Strong Hallelujahs roll --
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul --
sunup hour:
yellow blossoms turn gold;
one flutters to earth.
A little black thing among the snow,
Crying ''weep! 'weep!' in notes of woe!
'Where are thy father & mother? say?'
'They are both gone up to the church to pray.
'Because I was happy upon the heath,
'And smil'd among the winter's snow,
'They cloth'd me in the clothes of death,
'And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
'And because I am happy & dance & sing,
'They think they have done me no injury,
'And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,
'Who make up a heaven of our misery.'
dry leaves skitter
past the temple censer,
colored by lantern.
Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 