Apricot Wood
I built a frame of apricot
wood. This was for you. The clouds float
through it even as I sleep. You wrote
once of wild herbs gathered and brought
to a lovely girl, an offering not
of passion but of some remote
desire to hear a word from the throat
of the Lord Within Clouds. I thought
of this as I chiseled the wood.
Last night it rained. I listened to
it from my bed by the open
window, hoping that the clouds would
not leave. This morning two birds flew
by. It is raining again.
Originally penned in the 1980s, “Apricot Wood,” is included in my 2015 chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform. It was first published in 1986, in SPSM&H, a publication devoted to sonnets, and was featured on Autumn Sky Poetry Daily in March 2015. It’s interesting to look at my writing from this period. Some pieces seem to have been written by a stranger, long ago and far, far away. This one somehow seems closer.
O at the Edges 
I particularly like the dreamy feel of this poem.
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An oldie, but it still works. I enjoyed fusing the idea of Chinese poetry within the sonnet form. Much fun.
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Quite like this one, and your recorded reading, perhaps I’m hearing the echos of classic Chinese poetry in it too.
Yes, it must be odd to visit old work. I’ve revisited things I wrote in the 80s but no further, no things from the 70s and 60s. As you recount, it is an I Is Other experience, though I do sorta know that person as you do. Like visiting an old friend long separated–there’s an awkwardness in your separation certainly, and.yet something that returns quickly.
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Thanks, Frank. Of all the poetry I wrote back then, the voice in this one probably most closely resembles my current voice. It had not yet become natural, and I could not duplicate it at whim. I was still flailing around.
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