This first appeared in 1988, in Aileron. At the time I was experimenting with movement and breath and line, and wrote quite a few of these meditations in this form, some more successful than others.
where breath begins
it ends consider
light its secret
structure the sense
of limit defined
if a hand
recalls what the
eye cannot which
is the source
of remembrance one
touches more deeply
or allows itself
to be touched
a difference only
in the approach
In Praise of Time
We marvel that so much
produces only
more of the same,
increased yet
diminished, no two
alike yet never
differing, earth to
soil, glacier to rain,
stardust to morning,
open, filled, wasted,
lost, killing, preserving,
making more, wanting.
Stone Path (after Tu Mu)
High up the cold mountain a stone path rises
to the village in the white clouds.
I stop the carriage and inhale the evening fragrance,
its red, frosted maple leaves richer than any spring flower.
I may have inserted a bit more of myself into this adaptation than is my usual custom. I hope it does not intrude.
The transliteration on Chinese-poems.com reads:
Far on cold mountain stone path slant
White cloud live place be households
Stop carriage because love maple forest evening
Frost leaf red than second month flower
I am thrilled that Silver Birch Press is featuring another of my poems in their Self-Portrait Series:
Self-Portrait with Blue, poem by Robert Okaji (Self-Portrait Poetry Series)
I think this calls for a small snack…
Jingting Shan Hill (after Li Po)
Distant birds flying high
the lonely cloud and I drift
watching each other without end
until only the hill remains.
As always, I question my choices. Chinese-Poems.com offered this transliteration of Li Po’s timeless poem:
Crowd birds high fly utmost
Lonely cloud alone go idle
Mutual watch both not tire
Only be Jingting Shan
How to capture the concept of idleness and the meditative quality of the last line (not to mention the piece as a whole)? Ah, decisions, decisions…
Confession: The last line confounded me, so I set the poem aside for a couple of months. Just yesterday I pulled it out and immediately knew what to do. The power of patience…
Originally published in 1987 in a short-lived publication called The Balcones Review, this is the opening of a longer work. Today, as I look out my window at that same tree, I hear the birds, no longer silent.
Uccello
the wind is what
the stillness
desires to say
each instant
collapsing into itself
like a bud
returning
to the seed
listen
the birds in my tree
are silent
as echoes
before their brief
lives are
silent
something thrashes
in the leaves
the feather
spiraling
slowly
is not only what
it is
as the candle
is more
than flame
or a moment
curling
to darkness
the question
is of clarity
I built a frame
but placed
nothing in it
the wind
blows through
quietly as if
between silences
there exists
only silence or
light
the familiar embrace
unfolding
The formatting isn’t right. Not wanting to waste more time on learning code (hey, I barely have enough time to write), I’ve decided to instead provide a pdf of how the poem should look. It might be interesting to compare the two.
I have three poems appearing in Ditch, a publication “celebrating the innovative, the non-conforming, the radical, the alternative, the avant-garde, the non-linear, the abstract, the experimental.”
http://www.ditchpoetry.com/robertokaji.htm
Consider the hand. It’s where counting, where numbers, where math begins: add the second hand and five digits become ten, a threshold, a grouping.
