• POETRY •

Shi, or Chinese Poetry

“Clear moon pours bright light at night

and crickets sing in the eastern wall.

The Big Dipper’s jade handle points to midwinter,

all the star’s incredibly clear.”

  – from Nineteen Ancient Poems

 

Shi, or Chinese Poetry

Ancient glacial drumlins at city edge.

Late spring ponds brimming like water ladles.

Outside the forest grounds highways in all directions

drone on out of sight like hidden crickets.

 

Shi and I always walk away from the city.

Into the pages of marshland where geese

fly in and out of the parchment marsh reeds

pen lines dashed off margin to margin.

 

We find two pecking at the gravel trail for seeds.

One makes eye contact and stops, spreads its wings

in fine pageantry, her black neck bobbing –

a black slender wrist behind a silk screen.