Two Cranes on a Snowy Pine

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snow

Two Cranes on a Snowy Pine (after Hokusai)

Who knows where bird
begins and tree

ends,

which branch shifts
snow, which bears

eternity. This, too, will share

joy,
elusive green

and breath,
with no thought

of flight

and night’s
fall.

This first appeared in Panoply in summer, 2016, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Many thanks to editors Ryn Holmes, Jeff Santosuosso and Andrea Walker for this honor, my first such nomination.

It also appears in my forthcoming chapbook, From Every Moment a Second.

See the woodblock print that sparked this poem: Hokusai

crane

17 thoughts on “Two Cranes on a Snowy Pine”

  3. I love how “no thought / of flight” and “dream of flight” (from “Mayflies”) work alongside one another in elucidating the continuum FEMAS encompasses of that which constitutes valid (human) identity and experience. Essentially, you exclude no possibility by way of illustrating the point that no reason to justify such exclusion exists. This Openness (with a capital O!) is definitely in the top five of the tens of thousands 😉 of things I find most compelling about your poetry, in general, and about this book, in particular.

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