Moon reflection
River crackles
Mountain silent
*
Light of moon
Breaks mountain shadow
Dances on river
*
Crescent sends yellow
Music dancing over river
Flickering into darkness
*
Bamboo baskets across her
Shoulders
Pacing strong
Steady across a long bridge
Toward mountain home
Bog Oak
The bole of it hummocked in the turf,
The knuckles of it deep like a tangled hand
Mummified, clasping the quag.
And the burl of it drowned there
Soaked to a fare-thee-well.
Impervious, hard as a cherry stone.
Death’s implacable fixedness
In the cold bog entombed.
Rock root to the world.
The Pool
Even at night,
When I am far away
From the pool in the Nephin Begs,
Even when I am not there stooped,
Peering through sedge at its silken stillness,
Or waiting in a blind of thorns
For some sudden wonder there to appear -
For which my life is the idiot quest -
The water ever sluices in, withal.
The surface shimmers
In the weird watery glow
Of a sickle moon drifting,
A bright star hung on its horn.
Sometimes, then, the water kelpie,
Become again a glimmering girl,
Rolls languidly to the still top
And slippery, shoulders it over Into slow concentric rings
That splinter the moon into wrinkled rippling winks
And rock the grasses browing the banks.
They rock me too while away I nod
Not asleep, nor yet awake,
But floating, cradled,
Above yawning water vaults.
Gently jostled in the soft twilight,
Lullabied by her water song
Whose beauty steals my breath,
Troubled by vague huge visions
Just beyond my sleepy sight.
The floating stars then fall
And with them, I with her,
Like sugar melting in lemon water
Tracing crystal trails weirdly down,
Fractured, prismed, and bending,
Like the paths to fading memories
Darkly to repose at the bottom of the pool,
Where all the secrets in sometimes slumber dwell.
From Achill Sounds, a collection of poems by Thomas J. Phalen, a friend.
not hanford nuclear plants
mind you
filled with radio
active frequency shifts
seeping, bleeding
55 million barrels of
uranium
plutonium fool fuels
into down through
130 feet to Columbia River
water table
transparent tables
where drowning skeletons devour
questions
old fears sifting
healthy dust, no.
these plants evolved in northwest
Podocarpus, ‘maki’ loves some direct sun
needs to be in east winter window.
Ficus nerifolia, ‘willow leaf ficus’ bonsai
east window
watching for summer sunburn
likes dry air, misting is helpful.
Asparagus plumosus, ‘plumosa fern’
needs south window
during darker months
don’t water when soil still feels wet.
Dracaena compact will tolerate lower light
trim back to encourage branching.
There are so many messages I can't interpret.
The hundred maples at the edge of my street shout orange, orange,
orange, in silent voices. And may say more if I could decipher.
How I want to understand the many calls of the birds migrating through
on their long journey. And what is the message of the shaggy
wave-curled sea quarreling around the black rocks out at the far point?
Perhaps words themselves wander off into other fields, like sheep lost
in the depths of the hills beyond the local hills so the shepherd has to
go climbing up and down, his legs aching, his breath heavy
in his chest until he spies them off there under
that far evergreen, and wrestles them down and brings them home.
- Patricia Fargnoli
Pastoral
Then, Something
zen humanism
journal of a nobody
a poet reflects
enter
face
stone basin water temple
clap hands three times
throw water
on grey stone guardian lions
red, orange, yellow leaves
fall
into sky mirror reflections
escaping fresh snow dust
old people shuffle along earth path
wearing intricate kimonos
designed by
stone
Asahikawa loom creators
weave wool season colors
into old mountain fabrics
protecting brown bear families
preparing their winter solitude
bow low
o mountains
o west wind
o glorious lions
at the entrance
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