Paper Ghazal

This entry is part 38 of 63 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2011

 

Where waves roll onto the beach, sand the color of sable— that wet
surface on which fleeting messages are written: a kind of paper.

Restaurant napkins, gas station receipts, the merest strip of found
Chinese fortune cookie fortune: I’ve scribbled on these instead of paper.

In a calligraphy book, the character for poetry combines the ideographs
for “mind” and “dancing”. Tiny birds leave prints on the shore: their paper.

Old newspapers, bits of grass, leaves and petals, bark:
sieved through a screen frame, they find new lives as paper.

Sun not yet high, but frost melts quickly. Grass glistens. The world is full
of screens. But I prefer a window full of steam on which to draw— like paper.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Series Navigation← Insurgent SongGhazal of the Transcendental →

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