From the Book of Broken Odes
Your sadness
flutes through
dowel holes
cut by woodpeckers
in flaking sycamores.
They flutter bark
and call the maple’s sons,
the ones as well with sap
and weep.
And on their tears
the mayfly’s tripwire legs
alight to sup,
its wings still –
(flimsy fanatic,
hardened heretic) –
And break the skin of the miniscus
in a frenzy.
A paper lantern
Chinese
floating towards the sunset,
fiery raging at daybreak
sun up; sun down.
Helicopter seeds,
packed dirt,
green sprout,
spreading limbs
with foliage like a live crown.
The swallow and his wife with
oxhorn tails and downy chicks.
And now, after all this, to be felled by a man.
The mayfly’s struggles cease.
Inertia seals all energy
so suddenly as to seem uncivilized.
The king of the forest sways a moment –
and falls with a crash to the ground.