Ongoing

Along the moraine and the Carolinian forest
maples had already begun to turn red

in those days people wrote memory
in books not sticks, singing sometimes

I live in the country, sometimes
I live in town or in a dream

like state, that’s tiger to you, a big
heat wave, many days remaining

until the end of this year, walking
the land, summer grass and spadesful

of earth, a rectangle, sun on it
just that

*** 

It’s just that
peridot is
your birthstone
but your
mystical Tibetan
birthstone dating
back over
a thousand
years is
diamond

***

unbreakable
diamond
cuts through
illusion, atoms
strong covalent bonding
no form
no fear
magma, eruption
compassion

***

And on that day
from your window
the steel heart
red ratchet and pawl
a fixed arc
chained to the hoist of
the working arm
horizontal jib
on the mast
in the sky

*** 

By far
the best
magnolias
seen through a
screen, so many
lasting
so long
carpels tough as nails
surviving ice ages
continental drift

***

Saffron
rose mallow
worn behind your
left ear
changing and preserving
wrapped in tiger skin
demon slayer
holds its color
even in the hottest
summer days

***

Sun in rips and starts
ascending ragas
for rippling,
winnowing
retting
scutching
heckling
spinning sasheen
to wrap
and swaddle
 
***

Woven moonlight
pulled by hand from earth
linen from line
or Nile where
flax grew
exceedingly soft threads
irregular shapes
peculiar as tigers’ patterns
no two stripes alike
 
***

Hydrangea
blooms perseverance
the teaching unfurling
a block print tiger
alert, incised
by a table
near a drum
on a carpet
revived from
the sealed cave
in Dunhuang
 
***

Fine-grained, watertight
catkins, wings, heart-shaped
leaves, silver shadow
will ignite from
the smallest spark
branches rest
during the night
birch bark fragments
found at the site
 
***

Did you plant
the ivory silk
lilac, its broad
panicles appearing
in early summer
its bark like
black cherry and
like the wolf willow
part of the olive
family tree?
 
***

Two
white-tailed deer
a large brown
moth, a cicada
shedding its skin
the impossibility
of repetition
of one
water lily
on the Credit River
 
***

Descending ostinato
in the seventh movement
glass harmonica
cues for the entrance
of a private
performance
morning ascending
catches on the figure of
a feather on an old t-shirt
a city
named for a reed
 
***

Tiger runs wild
waning crescent
28% or 29% visible
not many images
illuminated crescent edge
casts long shadows
seen from earth, the moon
getting closer to the sun
can’t be directed
 
***

Tumulus
barrow
kurgan
mound, bank
kneeling and arranging
tugging on your breath
hazel poles or stakes
no hill overlooking
the sea, placeholder
filled with treasure