"duckweed" poems
Spring pond deep and wide
Time for the vessel's return
Slow the duckweed flows together
Willows draw them apart again
2.8k
Autumn flares out, its flame burst clouds
strewn about misted cliff sides, loam whites
of winter taking their place. A stiff willow breeze,
ten thousand things withdrawn to burrows and immortal
pine heights. First snows stream down, duckweed carpets
of August fade, jade peeking through white. I embark
on the seasons final sail in hardening ice waters.
Til spring my sails will be folded, my raft in idleness.
~~~
Rafting on moon drenched river, avoiding cascades and crash of
rapids and falls. Silvered driftwood a warning. Silent glide of
mulberry oar through dark azure, another crafts sail in silhouette.
From the deck a black spectre dives below, stillness follows
splash, re-emergence, beak wrapped around a dazzling rainbow.
From my raft dangling lantern sways, trout swiping at
gathered moths – scatter and return, some from a far off realm.
Some trout in the net, others not. Luck or the way – who can tell?
~~~
Dusk colour gorge sheathed in
emerald blankets, rising into sheer
cliffs of auburn cinnabar, all
underpinned by the fathomless
flow of azure clarity. Snowy Egrets
nest in pine top heights clear of dust.
On white sand shores gibbons howl
towards squawking beach gulls, squabble
over landlocked trout – debate without end.
Peach blossom petals swirl on spring breeze
over carpets of jade inter cut by king
fisher blue zipping over duckweed. Oriole
song weaves in and out of mulberry branches.
In these vast and vague waters -
coves, creeks and streams all one,
a river dragon lives an undetermined
existence. Mud stirs below, merely a
catfish airing grievances.
Red tail flares in dirt,
my mulberry oar rows me back home.
Jan 15, 2012
Jan 15, 2012 at 8:13 AM UTC
First and foremost in everyone's mind
but mine
is the Green of the Crayola crayon.
As Green as factories and skyscrapers, like
man
and his tendency to take over.
Green looks different through my eyes.
I see the Green of a clover.
Green that is
alive.
Bouncing and bobbing and buoyant
as duckweed on the waves.
Promising and purposeful and persistent
as the first shoots of grass.
The Green that shows in the people with
bravery and bright smiles and bursting with
life.
I wish I was
lucky
enough to have more of the Green of a
clover.
I see the Green of an emerald.
The depth of Green,
the bottomless bottom of the ocean;
Green where I
drown in my thoughts.
The emerald city where my insignificance and significance
crush me all the same and I am
smothered in questions
questions
questions.
So many drown in the shallow Green of seaweed. The Green of
money and makeup and my god have you seen Melissa's haircut?
The dollar bill Green of
envy and greed
that stops so many so many from diving any
deeper.
I see the Green of ferns and the Green of cacti.
Soft, soothing Green of
enough sleep
and
tea in the mornings
or
sharp, sinister Green of
alone
and
you should have studied.
I see the Green of Christmas trees
that should mean family and giving and light but
instead
means pretend to like her and
smile at the right times and
why are you so
unfriendly I mean shy.
The dark, for everGreen of the most
wonderful
time of the year.
I see the Green of my eyes.
The bluish goldish brownish color
that everyone sees a little
differently
but that's ok.
Because everyone sees Green a little
differently.
Jun 16, 2014
Jun 16, 2014 at 4:01 PM UTC
clouds roll across the sky
in an overture heralding the coming of
storms, of flashes of light in a spectacle of
natural birth and suicide. thunder rips apart the
fabric of the heavens, leaving seams unsewn to rain
upon the damp earth agape. were it that sunshine was rare,
that amber light shone only through the darkness of stratocumulus
and curtains of raindrops would we beg the tempest to stay.
trees tremble in the prelude of wind knowing that they
must too bow down to the deluge. the first ripples on the
water paint labyrinths over duckweed and tadpoles, the afterbirth
of the floods, so does petrichor. that fragrant herald of life
and destruction place itself in fractals throughout the golden
air, filigree all but invisible to verse, and the poet that creates it.
it could be just a drizzle, nature watering her creation
the only electricity the excitement of the mosses and ferns
to recieve communion again. the war-drums of thunder may not
sound, only drops falling on water in a steady
percussive rhythm hypnotizing and maddening, accompanying
the wind blowing the trees in a millenia-old melody.
this poem could only be Romantic musings of the grand
memories of an antediluvian hurricane that never
occured or was witnessed, images and sounds that can
never be seen or heard, known by storms.
Aug 24, 2021
Aug 24, 2021 at 3:51 PM UTC
we walk the path to the spring
where the waters come constant
from the ground unfreezing
warm enough for duckweed to thrive
even in blue winter,
deep with snow.
the air holds few sounds,
the snap and tumble of tree limb,
river's crashing iced sheets,
the click and kew of the junco,
wind, amplified one hundred fold
razor sharp in the cold.
how does the waters know
who told it; here.
it's here that you will rise,
at the end of a path in a small cleft,
said by locals to be the gathering
place of the ancients, the fairies
and the dead who died before their time?
we come to the spring and beside it
as deep in the snow
as we are in its mysteries,
we become a part of the story
reassured that the promise
of the thaw is as constant
as the coming march sun
and the ever flowing water
at our feet.
Sep 29, 2025
Sep 29, 2025 at 4:41 AM UTC