Mountain
with the peak sitting in the morning light
In the Hold, We Raise Our Voices
In between worlds, I don’t rememberanymore which mountain holds my heart, which meadow. The rain spreads like a scroll; and tree-shapes seep through fog, brush-inked as on a silk banner. I used to knowhow many boats were tethered to the dock,how many times temple bells pealedat dusk. Distance has become our mother, which is not …
In the mountains, we learned about longing
We were taught the riceterraces, laid end to end, could circle the earth several times— a belt of brown and green, a girdle festooned with grain— each seed the shape of a tear or a drop of milk that flowed from the breastsof a goddess who took pity on our hunger. …
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Jing Ting Mountain
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys: “painting the peak like a peak some sage for the bedside // how to have that peak now making up the plain // I will tell my heart to change lodgings”
Icebreaker
One by one I took an assortment of items out of the depths for cleaning and winding. One lung lay asleep; the other traced feeble circles on a cold saucer. I rubbed the tip of a raku-fired stone and its face bloomed like a small moon behind a mountain. In the closer distance, animals scoured …
Whither the mountains of yesteryear?
The Storialist: Each year, the mountain loses more of itself, its footing. Ice fall and avalanche in place of an unmoving surface. Inside, stretched and shifting, a piano slipping out of tune. Mountains of today are not the mountains of your childhood.
Spicebush silkmoths
It never fails to amaze me how little we know about our neighbors here. I’ve been noticing these curled-leaf cocoons on spicebushes for years, but never realized that they were most likely the work of the promethea moth, A.K.A. spicebush silkmoth. In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit that we initially mis-identified this mating pair on …
Diorama, with Mountain City and Fog
On Friday afternoons, my father sometimes picked me up from school and took me with him up Session Road, past Assandas, Bombay, and Bheroomull’s department stores; then Dainty Restaurant where the chess-players were by then deep in their cups, and the air was fragrant with the smells of coffee, soy sauce, and sesame oil. In …
In the hall of the mountain cricket
It’s been unusually wet here in recent weeks, so for International Rock-Flipping Day this year I thought I’d try my luck up on the ridgetop. In the past, my style has been to flip lots of rocks and hope that I’d find something interesting sooner or later, but this year I decided instead just to …
Heat Indices
Bombs go off right across the world from where I live, among a people who look like me. This is news because they are not at war — or at least, not very much — & because they look just like me. Meanwhile in America we are blowing up mountains & burning their black hearts …