////
Names cut in aspen
wiped out by a bear claw
No meaning but this
Big Woods
A thousand years of stillness
No thought but breath
out at dawn
in at sunset
Mist along the creek
The apex of the wedge squeals
Ground ripples at the moment of freefall
A world of branches bends as if
to a last storm and changes
to fine dust
“I’ve seen a guy get hit and there wasn’t
enough of him left to put in a lunchbox.”
If the Wild Geese
If the wild geese ever learned to read
they’d be subject to passport control, immigration
sanitary codes, compulsory education, taxes
In a few words their way would be gone from the sky
Geese in apartment buildings
or limping home from work
Drunk geese, dull broken feathers
Geese shooting each other with pistols
The young birds on the street getting into cars
with creepy foie gras chefs
The geese walked out of dinosaur cities
and one of them was the first to fly
There’s no evolution without genius, without
miracles. That’s what wings are
The Flower Sermon in Raleigh
If we were serious about government
there would be statues of translators
on the capital lawn, not soldiers
I’m reading Ikkyu in English
“Lie down in a burning house for a moment
feel ten thousand eons of pain.”
Maybe the grunts in the statue
would know something about that
You have to tear your eyes away from the flames
the shining glory of the warriors
Everyone knows what a bullet means
not so the words that might save you
In next poem a teacher says nothing
but holds up a flower
and one of his students smiles
Those were translators
Sam Silva says
incredible