A Renga Written by My Lonesome

32 COUNT NATURAL CASING LINKS


Waiting in twilight
for darkness deep enough
to light the yellow lamp.

When I was young, I didn’t
dance, and now I dance like this.

The catechism girls
wobble to first communion
on their new high heels.

Oldest memories are of
earlier recollections.

Dream or misty night.
Can you make out the song heard
only from the bridge?

Faintly violet in flight,
the blue and white butterfly.

One purple flower
betrays the bindweed, curled tight
around scrubby trees.

In its arms, the old maple
holds its leafless, broken limb.

I wake up thinking
Christ, my index finger’s numb:
Still holding your hand.

If it’s her perfume I smell
on you, whose scent is that?

As it propagates
throughout, can you say here
voice ends, record begins?

Choose: forgotten happiness
or false memory of joy.

Only now hearing
of a friend’s old hurt—what use
untimely comfort?

So, how much grief and longing
will this little art assuage?

All the workday long,
dogwood blossoms fall on cars
in the shaded lot.

Among all my employments,
please find some trace of my work.

The unheated house.
Back to back with my black dog,
lying in sunlight.

Boats drift apart, together
tug the stake on the night shore.

Recalls his words of
farewell more clearly than her
to whom they were said.

Now long past, the nights
that were to justify our whole lives.

Out front, my car parked
crooked on moonlit ice. Here
we are, warm and naked.

The trees crackle in the wind,
after hours of freezing rain.

Cold rain becomes snow.
We remember summer, though
it not come again.

Walk again in the same woods,
where we’ve always seen new birds.

Long unvisited,
this narrow space, here
between garages.

Note from an inside pocket.
Forgot what it said again.

Of the old photos,
the one remembered doesn’t
match its memory.

Neither so old and sick, dear,
yet, to have to lie alone.

Silver note. Our son
tings the ancient copper bell.
We age gracefully.

At my most garrulous, still
I am thought strangely silent.

The perfect poet,
for greatest effect, just once
in his life writes "fuck."

Shee-it—winter, spring, summer, fall—
beer stanza time, raht chere y’all.

Two by Ono no Komachi

Should the stream whisper "come,"
like a severed reed,
I would float away,
adrift as my heart.



Falling, the long rain,
the color from the flower,
the eye through the world.

A Couple

A COUPLE


For years now I’ve known,
with the first intake of breath,
it’s you on the phone.

How much more gentle
than your words are your fingers
on my sleeping back.

A Few Hoboes Overlooked by John Hodgman

Eat-Me Ed, the Eunuch
John "Forgets His Name" Doe
Ham on Rye, Dijon or Die Harnish
Potato Face Lily
Strapon Esther Manbottom
Hamish the Kiltless Hungarian
Got-a-Letter-Once Grunwald
Kippered Arnie
Fatter-than-Maxie Marvin
Lucky Leo, the Gristlefinder
Japanese Randy
Fish Strangler Betty Scales
Plaid Face Jimmy Drozik
Double Underwear Arnold
Steam Iron Mary Graham
Strain-It-First Cappie Jack

Aren't you?

YOU ARE ALREADY A BUDDHA


I.
May impossible
lovers conspire
to idle over coffee
as if
each other’s
kisses were barely dry
on lips and thighs.


II.
How shall I see
the sun on my hand
as I reach from the shade
for my tea on the table,
not knowing
that just now
your captors have released you
at the muddy end of the logging road
and you are walking down
to the highway?


III.
When will the cartoon coyote,
chasing the bird
out over a cliff
look down and realize
he can walk on air,
at last
allowing the animator
to draw in the blood
dripping from his teeth?
.

A Tanka as a Tanka

Should we never meet,
and entwine, like threads making cord,
now this way, now that,

upon what line shall I string
the jewels of my life?
--Sakanoe Korenori


The rare tanka I've managed to render as a tanka.

Spring Prospect

The nation in ruins,
mountains and rivers remain.

The city in spring's
deep in grass and trees.

My tears at the passing days
fall as dew from the flowers.

Embittered by separation,
I startle at birdsong.

Beacon fires have blazed
for all these three months.

For a letter from home
I'd give ten thousand in gold.

I've pulled so at my white hair
my hatpin hardly holds.
--Du Fu


Thanks to Joel Lipman, the poet laureate of Lucas County, for the suggestion to separate the couplets. Helps to break up the clunkiness, in English, of always-endstopped lines.



Another Version:


The nation in ruin,
mountains and rivers remain.
The city in spring,
deep in grass and trees.

Lost in wretched times,
weeping over flowers.
Sunk in loneliness,
startling at birdsong.

Beacon fires,
burning for three months.
Family letters,
worth thousands in gold.

I've pulled so at my white hair
that my hatpin barely holds.