On rock with sprigs in cold she tunes her lute;
the tone, unseen, she, lonesome 'mong the shoots.
The green of seasons past all timely gone;
the eye has missed the meaning of the song.
As close to her and horse as to be felt:
a watcher, anyone, behold the melt
of milky sky or water, feel the chill
the summer gone, the wind come down the hill.
The orange vest, red leaves, the blushing horse
red at the bit, embarrassed at the force
of all his labor bringing her to this,
a singer, song unseen, sat in the mist
who, in the end, pretend we hear her cry
record it though it vanish in her sky.
Forever for us might the song she sing.
Watch as we might, we'll never see the thing.
Man, the first kind-of-chilly morning in New York came just in time for this one, which is about being kind of chilly. I guess it’s also about how I’m just putting these poems on tissue paper and sending them down a stream so the flow of the water can regard them for a discrete moment before they dissolve into the same void from which they were yanked, and how the poems in that thought are actually the work of all my days, and how me in that thought is actually all of us.
Anyway, happy Monday!
Thanks for reading.
This is Phil.
Image: After the poems of Da Mei by Ren Xiong