SHIKI: THE GLASS CLOUDING ~

 

Glass Window Tanka

sickroom

the glass door

I peer through —

can see sparrows

flying to the little pine

shut in the sickroom

the glass window

winter sun shining in —

lucky buttercup

blooming

morning and night

ueno woods lie across

the glass window —

I'll never be

tired of seeing

shut in for winter —

clouds cleared

in the glass door,

and I can see

tabi socks drying

crystal, glass door

I look through —

the house across, the roof

I can see

shepherd's purse blooming

thought I'd see

snow — the glass

in the glass window

clouded, I did not

see snow

out the window

I can see

even insects —

panes of crystal glass

are miracles

shut in the sickroom

out the window

the glass window

on the clothesline

I can see a crow cawing

crow perched

on the line —

does it look through

the glass door,

see me writing and caw

always lying

down — O, blessings

to you who put in

glass for me,

crippled here

crystal carriage

in the piling

snow —

I don't think I'll go

to the silver fields

glass put in,

waiting for snow —

tomorrow I'll see

snow piled

on the trees

dawn, outside

I see the snow —

someone

wiped dew

from the glass

Ugly Duckling Presse

            2024

ADAM AND EVE IN PARADISE~

 

R E A D   M E

       New Directions 2025

JED THE FISH ~

 

J E D   T H E   F I S H

 ( J E D   G O U L D )

DAVID THOMAS, PERE UBU ~

 

D A V I D   T H O M A S

THE SOUL CONVEYS ITSELF IN SHADOW ~

 

R E A D  M E

     Stenen Press

     2024

ROBERT CRUMB ~

April 23, 2025

 

THE ANTHOLOGY OF BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE POETRY ~

 

R E A D   M E

A treasure, truly. 

Poets well drawn and well built biographies.   

But, in the chapter "Affiliates" —

where is Cid Corman?

     The University of North Carolina Press

     2025

Night Landscape in Nelson County, Kentucky

ah, Moon, shine

thou as amber in thy

charred keg, hickory sky . . .

still as a still, steep

as a horse's face

JONATHAN WILLIAMS

A Piece

One and

one, two,

three.

ROBERT CREELEY

Calm down

what happens

happens mostly

without you

JOSEF ALBERS

from Twenty-Four Love Songs

20

When I heard the public story

of how they'd thrown away

their wedding rings, and how

the rings had been picked up

by the garbage men and taken

to the dump, and how laughing

finally they went out with flashlights

and found them that night I wondered

did they put them back on?

ED DORN

Imagine Inventing Yellow

Imagine inventing yellow or moving

For the first time in a cherry curve.

M.C. RICHARDS

Nine

It's not what

you think

it's something

else.

CYNTHIA HOMIRE

The Huron

I swam the Huron of love, and I am not ashamed,

It was many saw me do it, scoffing, scoffing,

They said it was foolish, winter and all,

But I dove in, greaselike, and swam,

And came up where Erie verges.

I would say for the expenditure of love,

And the atrophy of longing, there is no cure

So swift, so sleek, so fine, so draining

As a swim through the Huron in the wintertime.

RUTH HERSCHBERGER

THE COMPLETE HAIKU / BASHO ~

 

R E A D   M E

     University of California Press

2024

HIDDEN LIBRARIES ~

 

L I S T E N

         Lonely Planet 2024

EARTH DAY ~

 

Earth Day

We met like this, on this day

and our life's work together

maybe who knows has saved it,

together with so many others

whose persistence stays the worst,

the few who do what they can

is enough; the love they bear

for all the living and the faint

translucent vision of a future

filled with sharing, a future

with men no longer on the take,

filled with planetary kindness:

those hopeful few, those brave

persistent few, a tiny band

that may have saved us all.

One Day

Listen! It's all so ordinary

mostly nothing happens

quotidian they call it

then one day grey fox

grabs a rabbit so quick

right outside my window

I watch her take off with it

and then we all return

to that ordinary day

_____________________________

Clifford Burke

Being Didactic

Desert Rose Press

2025

EARTH DAY 2 ~

 

     THE BLUE PLANET    
     A film by FRANCO PIAVOLI 1982