A Few Poems About the Joys of Sleeping in Small Boats

Fisherman Drunk Along the Reed Bank

By Tang Yin  

An oar sticks up  

Amidst the reeds

Tied to it there’s a small boat

 

It’s around midnight

The moon hides behind

The head of the oar

 

The old fisherman

Is dead drunk

Call him but he won’t stir

 

When he finally does get up

His jacket will be

Covered in frost

*****

This scroll with a poem is by the Ming artist/poet Tang Yin.  It is currently part of the collection of the Museum of Metropolitan Art in NYC.  I thought of it recently and decided to translate the poem after coming across another, much shorter poem by the Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki.  Shiki takes a very different approach by providing a first hand account about the joy of sleeping in a small boat.  Sorry I don't have the original Japanese text of Shiki's haiku but here is my translation:

Asleep in a boat

I lie side by side with it ...

River of Heaven

 

And I'd like to add my own contribution to this emerging sub-genre about the joys of sleeping in a small boat, which I've written in response to Shiki: 

Asleep in a boat

The waves keep murmuring

About eternity

  

Everybody's Moon (for Adrianna Amari)

It’s everybody's moon

say the long strands of marsh grass

dumbstruck with wonder

 

what if the pathetic fallacy

isn’t a fallacy after all

 

what if the marsh grasses

feel the same way we do

about sunset

 

what if the crickets

are full of longing

for the moon

 

what if

a sympathetic current

runs through the living world

 

don’t try to deny it

I know you feel it too

Song for an October Morning

The Buddha of Nature

Everywhere so abundant

Grasses trees and oceans

Overflowing with life

One pearl without flaw

Half shaded half bright

Intermittently 

Turns out just right

In the luminance of 

An October morning

******

In the 24th Chorus, Kerouac says all great statements ever made abide in death. But I say put all your eloquence to work advancing the interests of life.  Decay itself is more than sufficient to serve such purposes.  Be wary of ocean ferries.  You don't want to end up drowning like some damned Phoenician sailor.  Why all the death fetishism? What's so great about being late or even stuck in time for that matter?

The Meaning of Onement

From moment to moment
A fleeting sense of Onement
Felt just before the Day of Atonement

 

This is a #haiku I wrote today - the day before Yom Kippur, 2025.  I wrote it after learning the origin of atonement, that is of the English word atonement, which is quite different from what I had thought or imagined to be the case. I would have guessed that the word was of classical origin, probably derived from Ecclesiastical Latin, something like atonatus which would have meant to make proper amends …. But that turns out to be not at all the case. 

Atone is a word that's Middle English in origin.  It was derived as a compound word, or a word that was coined by putting together two other pre-existing Middle English words – at and one.  By compounding, to atone meant to be at one or well reconciled.  The first known written usage of atone appears in around 1555 but even prior to that there is a Middle English word onement which conveyed a similar idea – being in the state of onement, meant you would be well reconciled to your neighbors, your community or perhaps to the entire world.  That’s what we seek by atonement after all – to be at onement.  It’s a beautiful and powerful idea.

Coreopsis on My Mind

The world is in tatters

Our human condition frayed

It’s not yet summertime 

And the garden party is well underway

Right now the coreopsis 

Is on my mind with

It’s Dionysian dancing

To the rhythm of the wind

And melody of the sun

But you know how it goes

Always the same old pollination story

The insects must do all the work

While the flowers get all the glory

And Nature remains profligate 

A hopeless spendthrift 

Especially when it comes 

To matters of life and death

Birthday Poem

As twilight settles

The day's weight lifts

From my shoulders and back

No more digging in the garden

At least until tomorrow 

When I turn sixty-eight

Now life begins to hold

The promise of a jigsaw

Where the pieces all fit

Except some have fallen 

To the floor

And after finishing this poem

I’ll resume searching for them 

More light

More light

The great poet said

But here on the darkening patio

It’s well enough to sit and listen

To the chittering birds

                                                                                                                           

For whether they stem

From drugs guns or money

It takes a long while

To clear toxins

From your body 

And to level up

Beyond fear and desire

In the extended play 

Of a poet’s life

A Land of Enjambment

 

I had an eye exam 

online for the first time

today to renew my license 

We live in a land

of enjambment

and enchantment 

where no one is expected

to read through to 

the bottom line's end 

And while my outward vision

has deteriorated lately

my inward keeps

improving with age

(although it's equally true

my third eye gets 

more easily tired now 

when working outside 

on a bright spring day)

A younger poet’s

intimacy with decay

must be hard won

whereas such knowledge

comes naturally to me

as an older one

For whom each line crossed  

has earned a distinctive edge