Poem Written on the Back Porch in Late October

The clarity 

Of the last two

Crickets chirping on

An October evening

Just before the first frost

Can be heard with something

Much less pure than

The mind of winter

Surely the sadness

Is completely imagined

But not so the beauty 

Of the duet which is

Palpable in its vibration

In the way it stirs up
  And still fills up

The melody of 

The night

Nothing is too small not to be wondered about -- that is the name of a fine Mary Oliver poem that my friend Genie had posted to Facebook a short while ago.  And after reading the Oliver poem online I went outside and sat on the back porch in the twilight and was treated to a serenade by the last two crickets of the season.  So very much with Mary Oliverin my mind, it was just us crickets chirping.

Poem written while waiting for Greg

Waiting for Greg

In front of má pêche

A slight queasiness

In my chest

Nothing it seems

Is quite good enough

In the lifelong quest

To open the interior

Realms of being

And every day

Indifference is

A steeper hill

To surmount

A Poem About My Addiction

Didn't you post a picture

Earlier today showing Narcissus

Looking into the pool of

The Facebook home page

And if so how come I can’t  

Find it now on your timeline?

Social media can be

Just as addictive

As crack cocaine

Whether you get hooked

To a thumbs up or connections

Or the number of rementions

This is not a problem much

Discussed in the social realm

(for reasons I guess there’s  

no need to explain)

But no matter how pressing

And widespread a problem

This may already be

The social networks

Are more than happy to

Continue underwriting

The cost of our addiction

As long as it remains payable

In a currency of their coinage

And so the ancient symbol

Ouroboros has come to aptly portray

Our modern day self love affair 

As our consciousness has been 

Seduced into swallowing its tail

Birthday Poem for Marissa

As your birthday

Draws near I’m drawn

Into closest orbit

The very nub that

Speaks for our love

It starts as a smoldering

In the belly and picks up

In intensity as it proceeds

Out towards the extremities

It’s neither dampened

By second guessing

Nor banked by doubt

It’s the fire forever

Burning bright

A sure sign of

The plenitude

Of love that’s

Still to come

A perpetual flame

In fact like Moses

Encountered

That’s just how

Fulsomely the

Berries adorn the

Pyracanthus bush

So who needs

To paint the town red

When we’ve got this

Ripe orange glory

That binds us together

In and out of garden beds

Growing entangled as one

Song of Myself (Tang Dynasty Edition)

More than a millennium before Walt Whitman wrote his famous Song of Myself, the great Tang poet Bai Juyi (白居易, 772 to 846) sat down and composed a much shorter poem by the same name.  This morning I had the chance to translate the Tang Dynasty version of the refrain as follows:

Song of Myself

Bai Juyi

With a white beard

And face mottled red

I’m either half drunk or

In the midst of a bender

A lifetime passes

Before you know it and

Everything turns out

To be empty anyway

Lying on a sickbed

A frail old minister

Yet still singing

Like a crazy old man

And even so I hear 

Those busybodies

Want to make me the subject 
Of their painted screens

自咏

白居易

须白面微红    醺醺半醉中
百年随手过    万事转头空
卧疾瘦居士    行歌狂老翁
仍闻好事者    将我画屏风