Tarim desert burial boats

 

A girl buried with a bird's head in her mouth

 the dead girl with the head

of a finch in her mouth

a cave for the Karelian

a forest child

with the soul bird

sielulintu

 

finch chick mouth 

rimmed and spotted with light

mother's tongue runway

 

the dead girl's arrested growth

opens into nothing

unfledged

 

what voice

heard by a bird

to lose its head

to a dead girl

in a cave

 

 

 

 

https://www.audubon.org/news/whats-weird-mouths-these-finch-chicks

betrayal

A friend's betrayal

though long ago 

kept me awake

last night.

His mistakes

remind me of my own.

How cruel

it is

to hold

past wrongs

so tightly.

Those betrayals, 

even what inspired them,

have left us.

Now that 

we're old

those cold and

terrible

things we did -

words, deeds

sources of past pain

why not let them go?

 

 nothing grew as I expected

the lavender and mint expanded

but the sage

flew away like a white-winged bird

Avocado seeds calcified

brittle boned, algic

basil seedlings rooted quickly in water

grew sturdy as trees

These

familiar plants

here

in altered seasons,

longer than the north

I am

beginning to sense 

how little I know about how or

why things things grow

 

I observe sorrel leaves closing at dusk

to meet me opening mid-morning

So many plants under the earth

yet to grow

hidden like ghosts

 

 wu lou

facing

northeast

the e y (for Bob G. and Saroyan)

inside, waterlogged, bent

he sent this poem

which

offered

me

a sister's eyeye

close

and loved

but he,

I

imagined

e

y

1

A sooty gull

A weathered hull

An empty beach

 

Dusk 

 

2

Deep heat seeps 

into everything marine,

as if even

the sea wants to burn 

itself pure again.

 

3

I lay in bed unable to write,

a cool damp towel upon my chest.

Here above the water

I've sprinkled dry plant soil with cinnamon,

see it caught in the finest nets.

Poor thirsty spiders!

 

4

I go out 

onto 

the terrace

into 

the grey evening air

where,

stooping,

I scrape dry soil 

from the roof's 

rain troughs, 

hope.

 

 

 

 one swift

flying in the fog

hungry ghosts

I pass

ninety days

in an ango,

enclosed

within my rainy season's soul

as hydrangea open blue cold in the heat.

Then again

I spend nine hours,

a novena,

reciting 

Maria plena

to understand kindness.

It's the dry season now,

in Japan and Portugal,

full of fires

and pilgrimage.

Later, in autumn, I may ask to join Segaki

or an All Souls feast.

Offering food,

I understand ghosts want to see me eat, meet me in my body,

observe, regret, rant.

Afterward, ghosts retreat.

I try to step back, but can't.

I remember the cold blue blooms in rain- soaked June,

Too soon they dry and die.

During my novena

I pick milkweed bursting like stars for the dead

as

Molded sugar bones melt into early clouds of snow.

The ghosts met here will come again, or send others,

when another season turns.

No matter how much I pray,  

the dead never stay away,

remain hungry.

 

Notes on ほうじょうき

 

Hōjōki

 

 Finished first reading today

may need several

returning like a bird to words

 

 

 

Kudzu arrowroot cloth and Chomei's Hojoki

“When there is something to be done,
employ your body.
It is hard, yet simpler
than using someone else,
and being obliged.
When you need to go somewhere
use your feet.
This too is hard, but not as hard
as worrying about horse and saddle,
ox and cart.
Now, I divide my body
and I give it twofold purpose.
My hands are my servants,
my legs my carriage.
This suits me well.”

Excerpt From
Hojoki: Visions of a Torn World (Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature)
Chomei, Kamo no
This material may be protected by copyright.

 

Dividing the days

peace

a place to listen 

 

“A place of beauty
has no owner.
So there is nothing
to spoil the pleasure.”

Excerpt From
Hojoki: Visions of a Torn World (Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature)
Chomei, Kamo no
This material may be protected by copyright.

A beautiful prayer too or a poem, the lyrics of the birds

words without end

live within

and cannot be erased

or stolen

 overtime isn't paid anymore

afterhours get pitted and patched

no match for sore muscles

receipts unable to be issued

tissue or water to cleanse

reserved for who?

not you, or you

bowing -  to bend, to kneel

is sending unheard

wordless offering from

those least able to afford it

the rich usually switch it all off

as if

receiving prayers depended on them

unacknowledged who?

I think you know it's not you

it never was

because what you wanted and what you are

represent the scars that scare them

Lifting the light wardrobe up.The inside pine emptiness, waiting for washed and folded, hung clothes.

The mind at ease, pleased with openness.

Discarded cardboard now brought to the bin, nudged in between an old wicker basket, grey plastic bags of kitchen waste.

I follow the taste of cold wine, after giving gifts of salt and bread, into a conversation, and out of an end to conversation.

Rising, passing the pine wardrobe, the bin. Leaning in to listen to the elevator's descent.

Bent-stemmed red gerbera, geraniums are outside. I walk through sand, see a man standing, looking up. Laundry is drying at open windows. Too much is stuffed into another bin. A broken sack of used clothes spills onto the street.

At night, I sneak recyclables into the trash, study catalogs, order online. This night I watch the sky slide blue to black.

Back and forth, between the old and the new, fly owls, and scurry mice. Fish test the depths of fresh water mixed with salt. 

At sunrise, you recall the smell of old pine, and an old man, alone on his rooftop, tossing bread to gulls.