In this article, Krista Stevens, a curator of the Discover site on WordPress, has selected my poem “Wind” as one of her five favorite posts of the year. Quite the honor! Thank you, Krista! She has selected quite a range of writing. Please read her other picks.
My poems “Ramekin” and “Windows: A Theology” have been published in the online anthology Igxante: An Ontology. I am grateful to editor Kate Morgan for taking these two pieces.
Wasp
Outward, the quest for
space and the wings’
hunger to unfold and
shed this home of dark
flesh and encompassing desire.
And each thing remembered, the broken
sheath, the flowering desert’s return,
reflects the notion of being, of intent
in action and its corollary,
the gift of living through death.
* * *
“Wasp” last appeared here in January 2017.
I somehow missed that my poems “Earth Keeps Spinning” and “Awaiting Thunder, He Dreams” were published by Red River Review in August 2018. Thank you, Michelle Hartman, for taking these.
Drawer of Possibilities
In the drawer of possibilities
you find stasis, the lure of the unknown.
To what should this hinged orb
be subservient? Or that wrinkled blade?
An egg, the bald potato. The sacrificial
carrot? To everything its purpose.
Like that light in the crook of the
altered frame, attracting the winged
beings. You, of course, serve nothing.
“Drawer of Possibilities” appeared in The New Reader in March 2018.
Every Drop
Your light singes my roots
even deep underground, where
worms revel in your joy
and all the days’ secrets line up
awaiting their turn to kneel and
unwrap their daily truths in the
comfort of the chambered soil.
If I were a seed, I would wait
for your touch before sprouting,
and only then would I surge
to the surface, swallowing
your gift. Greedy but grateful,
I’d open, drink every drop.
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 chapbook , If Your Matter Could Reform, and was featured on Autumn Sky Poetry Daily in March 2015.
Wind
That it shudders through
and presages an untimely end,
that it transforms the night’s
body and leaves us
breathless and wanting,
petals strewn about,
messenger and message in one,
corporeal hosts entwined,
that it moves, that it blends,
that it withdraws and returns without
remorse, without forethought, that it
increases, expands, subtracts,
renders, imposes and releases
in one quick breath, saying
I cannot feel but I touch,
I cannot feel
* * *
“Wind” first appeared in Blue Hour Magazine and is included in my first chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
Moths
Small moths stir
in the darkness.
I feel their
wings brush my
face, my hands,
remembering the cry
of something unseen.
It is windy
again this morning.
* * *
“Moths” first appeared here in July 2015.
Peach Blossom (after Li Po)
Ask why I stay on the green mountain
and I smile but do not answer; my heart rests.
A peach blossom floats downstream –
Heaven and earth, apart from this world.
The transliteration on Chinese-poems.com is as follows:
Ask me what reason stay green mountain
Smile but not answer heart self idle
Peach blossom flow water far go
Apart have heaven earth in human world
There the poem is titled “Question and Answer on the Mountain.”
“Peach Blossom” is included in my micro-chapbook You Break What Falls, available via free download from the Origami Poems Project.
What is a micro-chapbook, you might ask? In this case, it consists of six short poems on one sheet of paper, folded (hence origami) to form a chapbook. You may download it, free of charge, here: http://www.origamipoems.com/poets/236-robert-okaji
Oh, yes. Folding instructions are on the Origami Poems Project site.
O at the Edges 