desert photograph
seeing a little better its perspective
a worn stone

bright mist
cold, the moon's rim hangs
yet young their song

a new tradition
passing the old house there
we slow

Through leaflet halls, soft
the woodland path lies unclad--
Life waits, looking on.

words, on a
glowing screen
a leaf falls to rest

as sweet water
falling, in the first month
when glad my soul

in the bright morn wind blows the clouds lights shine

In the night, wind, rattle
I wake in the changing dark--
Pat! The sound of rain.

compassion
such beauty...my heart
aches, in musics' sway

leaf and tale
in brief
heart-shaped

these fish
swimming in a barren world
our eyes reflected

Envy
how I hate it
It makes me want to **** a man for
dreaming, for asking me to dream.
What use is it, what use have you
in dreaming, in presuming
that I am not in my very essence
capable only of glimpsing the edges
the light-limned outline of the door
leading forward
and falling back again.

Grass, soft, in tired
eyes, shadows strewn; diamonds glint
in evening's light.

In that park, wooded
so, the great pines weave, standing--
drunken giants.

On, my love..let the
waves come, and take you, on...the
tears well; fall, silent.

in the morning
the old tree droops, black--
a nut falls to earth

when will
I love them
birdsong

Tall trees, bare
limbs straight; at their feet
how green the mead!

Cobwebs--
so they shimmer, as nets
of pearls strewn.

At times, in my
yet brief,
and ordinary life,
I have felt
wholly,
that all that there is
to anything
is inertia;
a reaction
that begun, ends: and
all I have felt
of beauty
is but the
latest iteration
of atoms.

It is like this,
sometimes,
that all the world seems empty,
or worse
that in everything around there is light,
but in me
only darkness,
corruption,
deficiency.

I have tried to be beautiful.

I have tried to hold
about me,
in me,
the mantle of righteousness;
of tolerance,
empathy,
and all that
seems
the trappings of the wise.
I have held to
old words,
verity,
and been content.
Not long.

For always there
has been some snag,
some frayed end,
that in the end
has been the cause
of my fall.
My very own fall
from grace,
in the endlessly
renewing
microcosm
of myself.

And in falling,
I fall always
into myself;
and there all the walls
are mirrors.

If you tell me
that there is still beauty in the world,
I will say yes,
I see it too,
and when I do I see it everywhere
and all the world is beautiful;
it's only
that I can't all the time,
that's all.

If you feel
that I am unhealthy,
if you worry; don't.
For even when it seems
that I will be crushed by darkness,
it is a truth,
that I love
the darkness;
seek it,
yearn for it.
Not always,
but sometimes,
I love it:
For it allows for
circular reflection,
for positive feedback loops,
for the intensification
of those id emotions,
without which, I feel
I could not live.
So thank you,
but don’t worry:
I will take care
of myself.

day's end
to the last open flower
a drop of rain

from above
backlit waves
of plastic

Bark of the old
pine, rough at my touch--
scented breeze.

grout lines
a row stayed
of fishermen

I see you
bursting like dolphins
from a grassy sea.

Crownless,
it is for the light on your leaves
I would honor you.
Silver rippling, with the breeze and the thunder.

And you among them
still, with gold on your bent
stalk. My heart goes out to you.
Linger a little longer, fairest
one. When spring comes again
I will look for you.

white road
sound--the grey fox
turns to flight

Listen, now my friends, for I
shall let, the thought that like
an illness threads, laced through
all the causeways of my veins,
that in the moment, threatening
decay, boils, and begs relief;
that all men, and women living,
made in the plan of this wide
and tangled tapestry, seek and
humor themselves to be, each
woven separate, unique in form
and station, and about them hung
the universe, dependent for its
character on their sight, which
itself by their hearts temperament is due.
Life, the lives of others, serve the
merest backdrop, the stage that
is the foundation of our act, and
our struggles, illumined by
measure of their intimacy, seem
in their importance to swallow the
world, and cast all that does not
pertain in a veil of contempt, disinterest.
Yet the world, as in untrammeled
thought we realize, does not sway
according to ourselves, move
whether sweet or bitter, along the
course of our presumption. But in its
step it moves to the tune of its creation;
wholly nothing, never fair nor foul alone;
a pool, in which like ripples man's every
thought and action begins, grows, dies,
and is reborn. Seen now, free of leaning
and imprint, the brush's work broad,
shallow, a truth is opened, that wiser now
perforce we clutch to our *******; that of
the living, who suffer, there are those
who suffer more, or less than ourselves,
and to the former in the halls of memory we
can do naught but weep, so shut our eyes
and turn, pretending the point less sharp,
the dose less bitter, that our minds may fall
again to the pattern, and our eyes again look
outward. Walled so, is it a wonder that these lives,
these men and women, shaped as they are through
pain are found forgot, abandoned in the memory
of their minds, their hearts? But memory is the
root of empathy, sympathy; so remember, and in
whoso you meet light their memory also; for it
is only when record fails that man's erasure is
complete; nor will ever his life lose its meaning
while there is one alive to remember.

How abundant!
roadside jewels, bright
in mornings dew.

lemons
in the bowl one
is chipped

Old church--
in freshen blooms, standing
a double pine.

Standing
yet another grass-grown road--
the gate is open!

in reading
of the poet's death, Imaoka--
stone falls on stone

Bare stem on
ground upright--on its limb
the flower-plume.

tulip
in its root is
every root

By the roadside
five lone purple flowers
among the clover.

ahead
two red cedars
before pines

stone vase so somber rests ducks meet

colored in
a trees bend
and a tune