Winter Light Poems

THOUGHTS ON MYSELF WHILE TRAVELING

After Takarai Kikaku

Evening again    and the sun 
on its shroud-slide not unlike the mind 

when its thoughts lie down
in the void it did not know was there Tonight 

the dead feel less dead closer     as though 
what separates us is more of an idea than a mode 

of being The heavens again Their paths
long-looped and labored unlike the little heart

burning like a star in my son’s chest Motion
again and time again I am thinking

of journeys or maybe not the long
one long and lit by what?

Silence in the after and again
Blue boat on the wide water Wide 

water darkening into the day’s drawn drapery
behind which the waves wash again into nothing

---

THE TURNING

Winter again,

and again the drift 

into darkness

within, darkness without

the light 

of leaves leaving their traces

facing their own 

rising, sky lifting like a 

wing, a song, 

a singing 

beyond what the beauty bringing

this day into today means

for the season of twilight:

manner of threshold,

cross over me once more.