Moonprint
With a moon not yet full behind a sky not yet clear
a glowing handprint floats over the house
holds emptiness like a drifting welcome
closed to nothing always open to you
Moonprint
9 Replies
Tag Archives: tzu-jan
Sunday Service, Small Town in Virginia, Late September, on the Occurrence of Emptiness
Sunday Service, Small Town in Virginia, Late September, on the Occurrence of Emptiness
No traffic. A leaf clatters like a steed with an urgent message
then gives in to a burlesque swirl and stills itself out
of momentum. A yellow moth staggers on uneven air across the empty street.
I can walk down the middle of the road past lonely double-parked cars.
Not a soul is about. The churches are filled up with their giant doors shut
like a present I will not unwrap. The entire town is my empty prayer.
I can appreciate every curb’s lift, every curve of crumbling brick
arch on old buildings, window-shop for emptiness and find it
everywhere. Even the crow’s shadow barely skims the earth.
And a thousand yellow leaves do the moth better than the moth did.
To the Tune of a Song Not Yet Written [3]
Note: third in a series of poems with the same title, to be scattered throughout a larger project called The Drift
To the Tune of a Song Not Yet Written [3]
Five white petals on a black flower
among many in an orange field on the sliver of wing
of an insect pausing by the sill then flying then forgotten
nine months later—my first five decades
jss
Lotus Compass Points
Lotus Compass Points
Some times you have to go
deep enough in so
there’s no way
out
before a sense
of real direction
develops
*
Orange sun sets through gap in clouds
in the midst of a spring snow flurry
does nothing know its place?
or I have forgotten nothing
has its place here
*
Mist rises from trees
ghosts of foliage
longing for last summer
Sometimes I feel a ghost
in myself a burning off
that I mistake for rising
It clouds the moon
between us
*
Navigating mountain fog road
I slow to the speed of the visible
The sun only a white rumor
all wild empty air just out of reach
Descent brings clarity
a painted line, the next curve ahead
truths higher than any
enveloped peak
Translations from the English 