Saturday, March 5, 2011

Kyoto Gosho, March 4


Newfallen snow, gone
from mountains and roofs. Below,
a single pine bough
still dusted where courtyard shade
slants over the stone garden.

Flash of midnight blue
strutting across the raked court:
a crow in sunlight
under watchful surveillance
of minor functionaries.

A shell of itself
clinging joyfully to life:
the ancient plum tree
but two branches flowering
from a rind of hollowed bark.

2 comments:

  1. Lovely. My love for crows and ravens returned this week with the beginning of four new raven paintings. As soon as the transfer of sketches onto canvas began, the trees outside my studio filled with crows. This has happened before, every time I paint them in fact. And now this lovely poem. And the "midnight blue" describes crow's cousins, the ravens, and the way their feathers reflected the Arizona sun on my last visit.

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  2. It's nice to know we share a love for such amazing birds. I'm always fascinated by their intelligence, their amorality, and not least by that always surprising shift from black to an intensely saturated, reflective indigo when they spread their wings.

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