2 100 142 https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/a6c5477172c2b49ba47e91d7f7e6c255.pdf 5982469e49f1ca74184434dfc0e6d676 PDF Text Text EARLY WORK Gail Sher’s Early Work presents the poetry she wrote between 1981 and 1997 that has never appeared in print or was published in literary journals that no longer exist. Since 1981 she has published more than thirty books of her “long-form” poetry. The pieces in this collection are shorter, but they have the lilt, the drive and the passion of all her poetry, early and late. Where are we? What delightful imagination calls forth such nomadic and complex linguistic hybrids? Gail Sher’s “la” is a panoramic bejewled stretch of text. An outrageous glistening sound . . . relief beyond latinate sensibility. Gail Sher EARLY WORK —Anne Waldman Gail Sher Gail Sher’s surprises will keep you open-mouthed. They’re the fine haiku of derangement; each poem soberly twitters and schwitters across a streak of the page “not aleatory,” pure surprise because it’s boiled down so far. —Jack Collom on Marginalia Gail Sher lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area as a writer, teacher and psychotherapist. In addition to her poetry, she has written three books on the craft of writing, informed, as is all her work, by the study and practice of Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Yoga. For more information and to read her poetry online, go to gailsher.com. NIGHT CRANE PRESS �Early Work �also by gail sher PROSE Reading Gail Sher Poetry, Zen and the Linguistic Unconscious One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive From a Baker’s Kitchen POETRY Pale Sky Five Haiku Narratives Ezekiel Sunny Day, Spring Mingling the Threefold Sky The Twelve Nidānas Figures in Blue The Bardo Books White Bird Mother’s Warm Breath The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries though actually it is the same earth East Wind Melts the Ice The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call old dri’s lament Calliope Who, a Licchavi Watching Slow Flowers DOHA Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse redwind daylong daylong Once There Was Grass RAGA Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms Moon of The Swaying Buds Marginalia La Kuklos Cops Broke Aide Rouge to Beak Having Me (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem From Another Point of View The Woman Seems to Be Resting �Early Work Gail Sher night crane press 2016 �Copyright 2016, Gail Sher All rights reserved Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978-0-9858843-8-3 �For Brendan ��CONTENTS Preface xi She stood all divine in her lash 1 Dreaming he loved her 11 The beach and the sun shone brilliantly blue white against the sky 25 Her hands and arms are very clean and that’s another thing she’s conscious of 31 One can do little about an image 41 Lady Nijo Pieces 49 holy in a name letter-pressed, et al. 65 wait her red 75 strega little-flower, et al. 83 fish no mind steak tuna tuna, et al. 89 Sudden wooden shark and lean and visible, et al. 101 As a cow does she does against the wall of glass 113 Deft and resilient, et al. 115 Chests in exact spiritual (ostrich) is the steep person 123 Suppose deeply offers up 131 Que. This would be it shining internal switch back 143 ��P R E FA C E As I approach the end of the arc of my career as a poet, I find myself looking at the beginnings, not so much for the beginnings themselves as what they tell of the slant of my poetic concerns for almost forty years. Reading the early work1 from the standpoint of the late work highlights the late work in a unique way. In spite of huge differences between early and late, the rhythms seem the same—the lilt, the drive, the passion, the ping. From a writer’s perspective, there is pleasure in watching one’s “achieved” voice emerge as if effortlessly, even joyfully, though it took years to accomplish and recognize. May you, dear reader, find in these words your own pleasure. 1 This collection comprises writing I did between 1981 and 1997 that has never appeared in print except for three poems—“She stood all divine in her lash,” “Deft and resilient,” and “Suppose deeply offers up”—which were published in literary journals that no longer exist. ��She stood all divine in her lash �She stood all diivne in her lash Grand her very presence look voice the mere contemporaneous fact of whom multiplied by sudden magical amounts the accuracy with which he heard what he had said just as she had heard it. Various. Fifty women. Her young eyes bred like linen for a wedding the effort of an age awaiting that ceremony. They unwrapped him. 2 �The infelicity and confusion of his arm now bent around her eagerness. Like a bride and always about her the breath almost of happy wonderful special. All this about-to-be-wait-andsee she wore in her blonde hair and the lilt with which she tip-chinned shook it back behind her an asset the measure of her wealth taken thereby by what she took so displayingly for granted. Her pretty perfect teeth her very small too small nose deferring with count-onable ease a deference he most assuredly counted on counted more than he could say on its ready assignation. This quantity the crease of his lambswool jacket confident and loose hang of tie collected so completely that her tea-table vitality pleasant public familiar served and radiantly settled over him an altogether different an altogether self affirmation. 3 �He fancied them liked them and passing through them with her more slowly now. Her room was high and cool and bare and opened on another room bare to fullness with sun. Here leaning gently pressing her cheek against the side of the recess she saw flowers a miracle of cheapness an exposure kept in durance as an approach her primary furniture to what she can have thought a full and formal air. Producible. Amazing. 4 �Saying nothing with his lips all the while pressing you so with his face. Instantly she was all there. Forgiving and from the way she managed to invest the little cubes of embossed butter the table-linen starched and pressed indeed the very violets in their dish between them reeked so sudden a violetness that it was all before him in a flash what forgiveness was for her and how it was tremendously was what she did best. She forgives and would forgive anything and as she sat with the demureness of a child her grey eyes moving in and out of their talk his quick large gratitude had so immediate and intense effect on his perception as to devolve it entirely. Strange and beautiful it was to him as he saw as he saw that he could see that he would now wondrously see always instantly by her acuteness. 5 �There to be laid in the water English sunshine. It was a mild day and as they rowed the long afternoon sun cast over boats and ripply water its own fine spray one through which he saw her seated straightly refreshed refurbished. Her pinkness translucent refined flaired even more pinkly pressed against black German velvet and her long loose triple strand of waist-length pearls. These she fingered like a rosary keeping pace with a rhythm so feminine so private that he hearing it darkened. What unheeded prophecies this Cassandra uttering and he her harlequin held as by a beat of air. 6 �Haunting so in her tigerish the visual. She was so happy and in her white dress and softly plumed white hat sprang into the day. Something not as yet traceable (words he couldn’t catch?) some such loose handful of bright flowers fell by her as she along the plush air now loosely now arrogantly tripped. What was it that bold high look some form of merit some consecration breathlessly fresh. Even he in this resemblance it even did something for his own quality marked now as lo and behold nice in this gayness in these new conditions at large. The day was so soft so soft. And yet as black in its certain location can seem light and transparent so this softness against which he daren’t push claimed in yes didn’t he feel it the very whiteness of its bones colossal reserves. 7 �He wanted her verve her other star. She knew. The dark room rode her recognition bearing in its wake a dim parenthetical vocabulary. For it wasn’t directly or with a freedom that she surrendered shyly extending as it were a timid hand. This process articulated by its givings out took place in her heart like a habit with all the handsome formalities of a habit which it then fell to her to sacrifice. Burn she thought she pleaded for the light and warmth of it for the cool spot drift of it. Here was a location. Here was an other spot to which she could ride without flame. Free-hand she could ride this memory a constellation bright and new and airless. 8 �Her lungs the sperm of air too tropical. Luxuriant on the crest of whirling silver sapphire her life like a carousel poised at high speed. Realization massed like a wave and softly rocked the soft wooded air the too colorful shadow in which she too at once too vulnerable. What she had as part of her own process been avoiding rose as a dread the merest allusion to which exhilarating ineffable stripped her to the account of a new nakedness. So it was that she admonishing what had become for her a vigilance reproved even more mildly the sense in which he surrounded everything that touched him with an elegant permission an indifference she could just now barely make out as that which rendered him above all merciful or even it began to gleam brilliantly beneficent. Its consecration dawned on her there flushed for all its intimacy and conferred on her as a forest of august shade the umbrageous protection of her own derivation. 9 �Planting trees not out of politeness. Two in winter. The day had turned to heat and eventual thunder as he lay along the river bank old old old. His thoughts blue and in the pebbly water tumbling deepened with the tone of the sky as he lay concentric halos of waves lapping every ounce of foamy ooze somehow a syllable in this dream. This dream this blue-grey dreamy rocking the slight rock of a couple of small boats bumped against the landing undressing in their long cool tired line the willows with no waist. Too old. Too tired in the sandy bottom of this special shade of speech the talk was it chatter of the darkening. 10 �Dreaming he loved her �Dreaming he loved her it was clear he loved her you could see it in his face when he bent to embrace her at her sewing with very thin legs. Her legs were thin but she stood well in them. 12 �Shade. She was in the shade in the shade of his light. She’d prefer the shadows. Fly by night. 13 �Dreaming they were all there the little girl with the nice hair whom everybody liked though grown now she was there and all the members had assignments where was her assignment she was grown now where was she supposed to be couldn’t everybody see that she that she was grown now. And he said the last thing the snowman lost was his smile. 14 �She sat with her fork and hid the piece of bread under the lettuce. He was standing by the door about to leave she by the fireplace head in hands I want to come over and kiss you one more time he said come over to that rose on the carpet that spot and kiss you she didn’t say anything didn’t turn around he knew she knew what rose he meant. She ate cake slicing slivers with her knife slipping pieces of pink icing down her throat. 15 �What a waste she said and when asked what she meant she referred to his youthful body and intelligent mind and the number of times they could have made love together. Loose she lead a loose life they said but she saw it from the point of view of roominess and services rendered as a link. A large rectangular scarf of some pale green Portuguese handspun draped loosely about her shoulders. On account of the scarf its knotted texture and the suggestive way it enclosed her what otherwise might have been deemed prim was generally understood to be her way of leaving room for others or as you might say extending invitations. Make it snappy he said. 16 �Not enough it was not enough she wanted her blue convertible. Like a garment she wore it tucking her skirt to her thighs. Pink and blue in her sharp fresh pleats knowing about the drawer of sweaters. Sequins and beads and cost over a hundred and fifty dollars. She had ten. Bathing suits and could she see him tonight. Driving ninety miles an hour a hundred more stopped fluttering eyes her children said Mommy we told you. Oh yes swimming out to the sand bar in her frosty skin and he light and amazing too much like her husband. The children overjoyed in his big arms remembering Daddy sneezing in the morning. Mommy we told you. Oh Mommy. 17 �Which is true he flipped though women books you. Which is true. Inside she said it had a flip side an underside a flip side an underside a flip side an underside she grew restless and wanting to get out side and turn the whole thing over. 18 �So here goes. She went around the house looking for things to clean. She was a clean girl and like the nun in the story rolled her honey-gold tobacco immaculately without need of scissors to cut off the loose shreds. Her furniture carefully covered during the week and the week ends the thought of the matching chairs the mahogany brakefront and dining room set these things she imagined as she shook the crumbs humming to herself these were her things she caring took care of them her husband either away or lying out back on the hammock feeding the birds. He waited for her to leave. Then he went to the refrigerator took two raw eggs sat down and sucked on them. This was his pleasure like the indistinguishable words he heard on the radio and the endless staring out. This was his. Lemon meringue and she baked every Friday dividing it into tartlets and browning the curly tip of the top just so. 19 �She wanted raspberry or no chocolate. A screen through which she could see staring straight ahead her heart childishly carved initials and an arrow piercing its center. This was the porch of the breakfast she in her pink lace bathrobe. This was the table of the dinner when they made love and nobody spoke. This was the chair of wishing for mother. What flavor do you want. 20 �Things didn’t go into his mouth easily. Things didn’t go easily. In to or out of. Standstill. Down in the pocket where he kept his eyes slipped out for a headline occasionally got to keep up he thought fingering the crumbs and little bits of fuzz that lined the crack. Down and out he didn’t let up or on. Hang on she said by which she hoped to convey her power of language. Angry. He was angry with her and at her. He came into the room and hung his clothing neatly over the chair. She watched while he creased the legs of his pants just so and folded his pink shirt over it just so. This was his world. She had no place. In it. They tried to find her. Every time they came home the turtle got out of its bowl and crawled under the bed. 21 �Keeping to herself she kept things to herself and from herself she kept herself to and from things for a long time keeping what it was to her and what it was from her. Trying to get hold of what it was that was happening she said what’s happening and the man said I’ll buy that. Yeh I’ll buy that. 22 �Up the wall she said shove. Walls red walls and blue they are openings opening into or onto the release of convergence never you mind the upset. The young girl scratched the wall with her fingernails slowly enjoying the pieces of paint that peeled off into her hand. Her enjoyment was more excitement and as the peelings gave way rather like shavings from a freshly sharpened pencil she ate them. The whitewash and the sawdust she ate leaning in the sun with her clean neck. She bore into she bore into it she bore it the white weight of it blinding her hard blue gaze. She was still swallowing a mouthful of her lunch. 23 ��The beach and the sun shone brilliantly blue white against the sky �i. The beach and the sun shone brilliantly blue white against the sky. He was not what he seemed neither generous nor placid. There was as yet untapped in him a motivation prone and fallow which she sensed in the heels of his feet and the way he placed them on the sand. A discontent possibly but one that he chose not to recognize all the more so by acknowledging discontent in other areas. Undefined trouble held back and hid more easily in him with regard to whom she now felt to some extent in disarray. 26 �ii. Her gown bare at the neck and throat hung by cords that cut into her shoulder blades. The brown and white checkered gauzelike flounces blew between her knees. She placed the book on a nearby rock and disappeared eventually to be seen again on a precipice whose vast expanse she inhaled. The thin air palpable and coarse brushed her shoulders as she stood as if with wings ready to ascend or was it descent to which her thoughts clung the more likely concession to unavoidable and flaming rarity. She remained poised only a second but that to her unobserved onlooker said everything everything of her and the inextricable cord that tethered her rather like she thought involuntarily and realizing quickly turned away a comorant. This child swallowing the breath stuck in her elegant and gorgeously narrow throat and she inadvertently as it might be inexorably the fisherman choked at the idea. 27 �iii. None of the dishes appealed to her and she not noticing thought about cows and the way the artist drew them drinking by the moon. She did not place herself in situations. Rather hanging back and as by a gauge determining the occasion’s capacity she looked for something refined something altogether hesitant. Thus and as a sort of veneer she assumed for a time the shape of that beneath her a coating marginal and pleasant. She neither joined nor belonged. Her existence took place in relation to and in tangent with an urge and yet there was a likeliness about it. 28 �iv. Repinning the strand fallen darkly upon her shoulder the next morning in her flexible waist. She peeling the orange tinily and he the meat they were placed not by timidity below their fortune but rather by conviction above it. This bread this boat might have suggested for persons shallower helplessness in the felicity of intenser exclusion but he conveyed and she likewise in the imperturbable manner of a bosky interior an ability to include the largest horizon. Indeed there was something in their perfection so paid for that quite as if the proportions were fairly altered it had come as if it to all appearance cost nothing. They were settled and with the dignity of water as it slipped darkly beneath them they arrived at an hour previous to their departure an hour they had met long before this location. 29 �v. Rushes thin green stems all across the forepart of the garden like lines of rain in the air. Here in the shadows she sipped its provocation only to know that she must for the sake of everything dear push away the opportunity the names as they were named straight at her. Upturn as one might the knots and dull gestures of a fallow winter as she was still here to simplify it fell to her to accommodate. It clung to her and in the frame of mind to fluff the folds of soft subsiding nap she knew now it was now to her a conviction to asseverate and absorb. 30 �Her hands and arms are very clean and that’s another thing she’s conscious of �i. Her hands and arms are very clean and that’s another thing she’s conscious of. In small ways for example naked but for a pair of underpants she would sit with her back toward them facing the electric fan or again while bathing she opened all doors between the parlor and the bath so she could hear the radio. 32 �ii. Indefatigable her darling or her loved one these strips of hair. The longer they hang the more severe the challenge father. Can’t you seal it around his waist. It was horned all in the fantasy of those beads and she wore them trellised with magic. She learned this as a child and laughed to him her tongue and lips curled there as if he suddenly thought it was the size that mattered. It wasn’t silk she spit. 33 �iii. The morning sun. The leafs of ribbons cut with it. Every little possible throne cut with this horse’s clips. Clasping like the brook. How calm of her to treat it as if from her own slit. Plants have occasion to scream she thought twisting the throat of one in her palm. (Or what it was to be a priest or what would arise in his own natural beauty.) 34 �iv. She wasn’t bleeding or turned about in any way ridiculous. Streaks of lace wrapped like he said leather to this bound child. Mountains the few disheartening stream. (Or to presume her own chance or resume this life once.) Her size how can she hope where it was one thing and now this wheel has made a difference to him. 35 �v. Bulging she didn’t in her readiness parts the father. No forestalling as when she was a girl. Yielding her and ever so childish which is just endless. Perhaps this catastrophe leaves no attention. Myriads of little birds somehow arising with their soft wings. Very suggestive and other rides she took holding him loosely his legs and so forth. If not to be swept away by the fowls infants don’t make things quick or appreciate any suggestions. 36 �vi. One mouth beholds and what is your resilient image in it. Is it sweet or telling her remark like it after the rain. No lord. Her deathbed causes children to emerge from under it in the night. Shadows frequently telling of spring and how each little flower rested. I was so proud. Limbs of crying carrying the brown stone and pride of all these various kings. (She stood on top of its barrel and yelled assent as her mother always had striven in this direction.) She felt the stones and afterwards it wasn’t comfortable to protest. His meat just fit right on him she felt. Pleasant games or wasn’t this about all he said. 37 �vii. Figurines. The roots and were they written into whiteness. Such pleasurable entities draw on your skill swarm the pneumatics (how often have I told this) of our loved one. The sward and to strengthen its curvature no less to absent himself before her eyes. Often it pleases him. To see the development of this quick shelter and how it pulls and pulls torn from the cubicle. Out of the flint the square thread of passion so elaborate on the bone. One edge all too small for receipt like birds of it. 38 �viii. On wanting to do to told how it broke how thoroughly it was the weather failing. How settled she woke dusted. How it included the time and brought many people. 39 ��One can do little about an image �One can do little about an image. A ball park. A few fish. These are things out of one’s control at least after a certain age. Two by two. These figures stay in my mind. Lofty. I’d say this is my sister’s mind. Once the photographer came and put me in the middle of them with my bear. I say is. It still is. We never know whom we’re going to marry. One or two or three hours. What does it matter so long as we make the effort. Some days we walked and climbed and it was like I didn’t have any mother or father. But I always had sisters and they surrounded me enough. Except for Friday night I would have preferred flowers. There was a lawn and porch to watch from. We could sit and watch but we didn’t. Where we different most sharply. Sometimes it gives me a headache. There were the birds and when it got dark early we could glide on the glider. 42 �When I was not busy I would sit in my room. Do you understand. I was so worried the plane would leave but the other girl was reading on the couch. This bothered me for days how she could within the scope of a dream so remove herself. My mother didn’t die till later. These events are all crowded together as you can see. Mine was not a flabby past. Which is an important thing to know for anyone capable of understanding himself. I get lost in the mire of these thoughts. Twenty-nine is an important year for me. When I was twenty-nine. It’s just a feeling that came over me. We never listened to music much when I was a child. That summer in particular I remember. I had bathing suits and wore one or another of them constantly. Everyone applauded the selection especially my daughter who couldn’t take her eyes off. Seafood and palms. This was air. Waiting by the pool with utter conviction like a storm. Crusts of bread and other small occasions for gentleness. It is amazing how set it is. How forced into one hour. This was not a time for barrenness. Every little thing flourished. Sleeping 43 �and hunting. They go together nicely. What I really want to say is about the sun and how it’s like a portrait. The fragility of my world at this time is something I can almost keep. It returns every time I go swimming. The texture of the streets in that city. The way the stores are placed like an extension which wakes me. A split second later and this wouldn’t be what I would have said. I have never liked cats or other house animals which is something I can be grave about only for so long. So there were many people around. Many many people and this was very new. We gathered and everyone was interested. I was proud but actually at the time I didn’t even think about it. We moved to a small town. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in a small town. I’m afraid to say I was not happy. I made only one friend. What I wanted (this is clear in retrospect) was restaurants (if you know what I mean.) It wasn’t just a matter of going out to eat. My life lacked them like rooms 44 �lack wallpaper or some other element which doesn’t come from your life. I have always been attracted to frost. It puts worlds around you quickly. This town was on the corner of three states but even so there was no variety. We moved in August. By twos and threes. Everything comes slowly. The lake is relaxing. The boats and the way the sand levels off into the grass. Following a path in the evening through the grass. It closes things off. We’re not right on the lake. We’re across the street. The kitchen window gives the best view but then you don’t really need to look. Swallows are our affliction. At dusk they swoosh up out of the bamboo trees. At the slightest disturbance swarms will rise. Suddenly like an umbrella. Sometimes when I try and write about myself all I can think of is my daughter. I get up in the morning and sit down. The combination of darkness and plates. Even so people don’t think of me as stark. 45 �When I was nineteen I’m remembering. There are a number of ways to work this out but above all it is important to have this age. I felt I did this or could even now. Things don’t ever disappear. Romance is something I feel important about. Something that requires unity and a full sense of concentration. Now that I’m old it is strange what I feel I have left. I was not fragile in those years. Over against the world I caught something splendid. I like to be inside when he is outside. I like for us to go on trips. I like the motion of his habits and it is touching to me what he doesn’t observe. Which I can keep to myself. This is like a scent. The yard is his domain and I can visit. When a man works somewhere it takes on his gentle qualities. Now that I’m old I don’t want to relax. I have mornings and also in the afternoon it is very quiet. More and more as I recall the things that have been important to me how small they seem by comparison. (“Her yellow palm held up to the sky.”) What has been useful has not proceeded from things I have been in doubt about. 46 �Ultimately dramatic. I would say this is the style of our house. It was fashionable at one time though I question myself on this point. The stillness I feel now that my son is gone is seen as excited activity. Inside I am calm as a boat. Lacking this failure appears as a tightness on the skin. My husband. My husband and home. Somewhere I was baptized by another memory. I take walks along the road near our house. (“The way folds over from the creek.”) On sunny days the trees crack and you can feel the wind like a counterpane. No one is about and when the leaves fall it is especially attractive. Dogs. Each house as I pass by I imagine it as the bark suggests. Many old events and rooms. Particularly when the day demands a sweater. There is more to say about this. The rain and wet. Think of the days when it storms and how it looks from your bed to have some idea. 47 ��Lady Nijo Pieces �The common practice was to designate court ladies by street names and our lady was called Nijo or Second Avenue a high-ranking designation. Walking down the street he said hi how ya doin she didn’t know what to say but she was willing to walk walking he says when a man says to you hi how ya doin you say just fine thanks how’s yourself. 50 �She was in the process of divorce. No she didn’t have any children. Not having children was part of the process. Though she didn’t have children herself she has noticed lately a heightened relationship between herself and children in the streets. A child will call her and she herself will not know herself or whether the child is of herself or from herself or her own or someone else’s. She glanced around the room. She said her life was in a mess right now she didn’t really need to be there she didn’t really need to be anywhere in fact she was taking a vacation this was her vacation she was leaving Friday she’d rather not have to feel pushed. 51 �She was always the most beautiful she was always the youngest and most beautiful mother her children were so proud she was their mother so beautiful so young always. Her life had been full or sorrow and in her wrecklessness she made many mistakes. In the hallway she hung photographs of her children and her husband and her husband’s family. They were framed and arranged in an attractive manner. The people smiled at you as you walked down the hall and their dress was an example the arrangement an example as was the hallway and the whole house. It was pleasing and left little to be desired. 52 �Having. Willing to have. Having a baby. Having a cold. Now that she had it she wanted to stay home and take care of it. She was afraid to eat and when she went on her honeymoon got sick. Getting up but it slipped away. 53 �She felt that he had claimed her had taken over her that even the way he gave her freedom showed his control. He says let’s go and she not wanting to disliking not wanting to not wanting to know what it is she’s disliking gets her coat. Driving she left home. Homeless by choice she lived with the driving began to feel driven no longer homeless no longer choosing the driving to leave her. 54 �She paced the floor. She was lying in bed but her mind paced the floor discovering it with her toes allowing its different directions can colors to suggest what she might be. Come what might. She threw herself into the way attracted by what happens when a wall and floor for instance come together. It wasn’t the wall and floor but the coming together not at all a haphazard occasion. She wanted to become part of what was not haphazard an occasion that might come whatever else may happen. She paced and paced looking for the entrance into what might come. She was afraid she’d fall asleep. I feel it come. Over me like a blanket. Anything can be a blanket. Anything can come. Over me. She read what she had written a disappearing work she read quickly the work disappeared that is the disappearing disappeared the work was there but no one recognized it which could be taken as a compliment or it could be taken as the place to which the disappearing went. She intended to say it was to use words to make it to reperform the trick that tricked her out of it. He asked her a question but before she could answer he said No I know what I wanted to ask you and she knew that he knew and either never would or already had. 55 �I came to see you and your eyes. Earlier on the phone your voice was there but also somewhere not there some other where where I was not and you knew I never would be or maybe and was that the reason you said maybe tomorrow but then you called me back. You sat across the table and your breath always the strongest connection but your shoulders withdrew I felt them slide back as if they were making some other decision. Near your arm. You said they have a psychic signal for soul sickness. The signal goes off in the home of the sick soul and the people of the village come and sing. They sing very fast. I heard you sing but also heard your mind race. You’d never win on that ticket. She sat by the window. There were two men in the apartment across the street. One was sitting one was standing. She could feel the intimacy across the street the height, the impact of the fall, the boy and girl who climb a tree, he beneath her. You are there that spot turned to align to your tone of voice. Sustained like motion of peas pouring I hear it I hear it you are there pouring I know it at night by the sweat. 56 �Near your arm I hear your mind breathing the words hit me like a jar it breaks there is an impact and a loud noise the pieces shatter into smaller pieces smaller noises and then settle somewhere underfoot an exposed toe bleeds it is the logical conclusion. There is a blackboard words on the blackboard you take it wet it turn on the gas. I understand that you are afraid. If the money is there. It takes the confidence of Eugene Meatyard. Every year once a year with your rabbit’s foot. 57 �He was attracted to her by her associations but within the kind of relationship she had established with them were the seeds of disassociation. Later she wondered how much of his sense of the latter influenced his pursuit whether he too desired the disassociation and so bound himself with what he knew would eventually lead in that direction or whether he never (even in the beginning) desired a serious relationship and all that meant in terms of giving up and so chose someone he had a built in excuse to leave. He likes to iron things to press them to make them lie out flat. It is best with his own iron in his own room. He knows the precise curve of the board and can refill the steam attachment before it starts spurting rust. He makes love this way also. She didn’t like his integrity couldn’t stand his integrity. He was at his worst when he was telling the truth. There was so much. Intuitively they agreed on a formal vocabulary. 58 �According to all his desire he knew his desire he knew what it was to him and himself according to it he knew. He loved her and she knew it but it was the kind of love that had no future in it. This was a problem because they were serious people. The rain stopped. She looked out over the hill and thought about densities of air the densities of water and shiny. She lives amongst the angles of the buildings on the hill. The angles face off in varying directions and there are lights. She likes the angles and the varying directions. They show concern. 59 �She drank her tea as slowly as possible. She knew she was making a great deal of demands. The book became a craving at times she felt she had to have. She had it everywhere. She poured out the water and looked at his small body in the sink. Referring to flowers she stressed their colors blackish red or pale green or pale Mars violet. Her mother called. She was cleaning her room when her mother called but to avoid interruption she said she was just on her way out. 60 �In the meantime she thought but she wasn’t sure. She read in the detective story beginning day had reduced night to a thin smokiness. Wasted wasting her day she couldn’t make anything out of it. 61 �The Emperor tried both scolding and comforting. At last when she refused to respond he said Oh what’s the use. He said my name’s Booney and spelled it and offered two pronunciations she said do you like that name he said sure I like any name that means something. Sending money she said you have things for winter but the weather’s getting warmer now. She got her hair cut people said Oh you got your hair cut she said Yeh. What you like about writing he said is that you can control the situation. She said no I can’t and he said well neither can anyone else. 62 �He quickens me she said but then we fight about everything. They argued about it. He said that only in a matter of life and death could a Jew break the laws of the Sabbath. What couldn’t she understand. I want to do something with people she said work with groups of people help them in some way. Her other idea was studying Chinese. She said that wall with a door in it is something that I have to have. That’s okay she said I love to buy people cups. 63 �Her voice slips in and out of the connection is okay but she enters a place where the connection isn’t there is no connection I hear her make the choice and my mind screams don’t don’t don’t in and out and then the softness and I know she has chosen not to this time this one time so I tell her what movies not to miss. 64 �holy in a name letter-pressed, et al. �holy in a name letter-pressed hot liquid rabbit and then cut grass/ do not reveal the name close and haunted relative ninth/ ionize distance and forestalling even then reverse side branches those/ matched the harlequin the wherewithal of birds flown/ from the evening and settled 66 �to meal in hibernate blossoms blossoms given to or given/the forlorn knee two-toed palm coming out dry/belted or wheeze the hornets myriads of chest feline spools gathering scrupulous awakened grudge/fester and push 67 �stoat or laughing otherwise love-locked shatter/ to suit the heart balled profusion contemporary lima whose to distraught every every/ and her own features somehow asks the bottle when/ to be forecall marmoset don’t wallowing the tilt/ of names 68 �marginal rhythm to buy spring galloon driving which toward the benison warped/and her allure the scaramouch/how and on the way beets nimbus and to loop/her flaxen xylophone albeit staged yielding rose midges fly asks where/ the lip 69 �bliss and in her cabbage-petal fall the arch-meal’s bitterly smudge snow-tilt blossom/carried o’ way laid the ostrich fall hark the oilskin/pondering fetus duck seventh counter seventh distilled and scythed/against the skirt visible funnel soil minnowed for staid/and bloomless 70 �Saturday morning the by-product to purr turbulent icicle I am to this fricassee winter low hand buy/ to implement lip of downtown/ try-out the maiden door the hair spend/ sweetener this life 71 �ten-pan solvent and hurried set-back the wily moon (derivation/ to jump caved this moon) I I/ this shout tuna man and child/to marvelous her catch catch sunken baize blistered- 72 �moon fork tree twelve to shallow cuplove/ tip (as they say) tip sceptered whereupon every/ the brown to hidden her tongue against grey hawks partly 73 �ampersand and for her tree plank helium fish cape of wear/ ply ply link the crab as broad/ and in her hieroglyph galactic muscles fain/ ten thou sand arcs the fork claiming/ wherewithal the bird feet and toes 74 �wait her red �wait her red filleth her o waters pleasant her o maid wire her o duck fortune real swift baby real swift babe i. Swirling rivers. Oh the boat of reason passes. There they are. What time is it? Startled restless her green mate. What time is the day due? (Blood blood her blood-head beaten on the rails of it.) Not of this boy she expanded the chest. Once on the sea. This is too much. 76 �ii. She wears of mind counting the logs father. Thin I talk with them thin I give it up. Expressed of the lake. Silence upon it like the dogs. Landed trees loaded to the spring. Poppity-pop. Poppity-pop. She spoke of yellow as if it made the difference. Arriving at the middle he no longer has to shout. Those birds chased the nest. Not once did they bring peace developing her style. 77 �iii. Never before the mercy-grain. For light in the shade of that animal. Walkless restless living by goes. There was no awaking her. The daylight habit. She sunk for more of it on hands and knees. Pretty pretty girl. Blisters won’t interfere here. Her mate realm. Shiftless in a dozen victory. Look at me. Not over the air shadow. 78 �iv. The brook when she saw it. The man of hand on her lips spoken with deep thought. With a saddle on his back she don’t believed how loud how loud how loud she wagging behind of the dirt. (Leaning off the neck of him first cow on the speedway fused with hurt.) Oh for gods sakes drip into the path (or my babies christened child of our breath). Even in her own self-conscious horizon. The muss and fuss of it all. It’s the street and all the other gestures. 79 �v. Disenchanted her walk by the dozens. Oh mouse. Where is my father? Where is he hiding in the tuna can? For dogs we laugh. She felt them seated on clouds stretching mouths. Her braised thought of mind whipped thoughts. Oh longing of the red red had. (Wait until thorns rise. They’ll rise up.) Fools fools fools. I want the dark to have me. 80 �vi. Filters through it the King to dwell in the lamb. The letter of the lamb’s heat. Tall for it. Make it hurt for every of her cause. As far as you may hear a laugh yellow breaths I am she said. When she last came it wasn’t through dreams. I want to explore him son. I want my whole daughter up there. 81 ��strega little-flower, et al. �strega little-flower furore spawned/ to hug baby syrup heart occasionally: (entered in) climax the slow said familiar/ children have otherwise 84 �mock-orange wattle grows and in the upsurge clean and turbulent mammoth haunted/ the carrion igloo rides whither the astra khan/ hovered and famished 85 �lord and give the necklace child race dozen dozen sceptered/ whereby the under-morning sandwiched alone nickels crease the tidy/ rabbit tilted and shy salvage carrot whooped and practically nest/ the brown rood tassel recurrent inhere inhere inner crown/ All will the estuarial 86 �river the office my own deep pan swallow harbinger tries the note/ of brown deepens otherwise fingers curve/ and not to be this hardened fall common mouth curve interjects/ sue the meditation even so 87 ��fish no mind steak tuna tuna, et al. �fish no mind steak tuna tuna to licked/ for she wasn’t my eyes (her and her) belly-needle up no kiss 90 �diamond shally late come o mama/ settle in my cup lovely this the squawk squawk iron-tried firmament tree extend bold sensation-father great knowledgeable rain 91 �folded bloom to heaven legal to to/ the hunter fringe noise: the downer blooms vulgar fish livelier he man/ hawk like 92 �eagle door on sainted whistle this promise her red bud bible live (no fool)/ I talked 93 �aunts no vibration her mouth Oh I her soda bear iron burn parchment/ pass air light and 94 �adobe cheese praises blossoms hot stork white something leaning on silk 95 �whiskered mannequin lay laugh laugh laugh on her/ ghoul cousin (likely as not) cotton chest 96 �frozen pawn jelly cat-up her/ mamablood dipped in true pink o lovely 97 �luckily bent monk tulip blood sainted tulip blood ghost tulip blood father tulip blood host quibble sailor on sailor on 98 �commodious dream to wherefore thou internal to beam/ to is this sun 99 ��Sudden wooden shark and lean and visible, et al. �SUDDEN WOODEN SHARK AND LEAN AND VISIBLE Don’t and on her deathbead sun to wail the stripen drowsily were her meat to grip the heart to grip the heart to grip the heart. Dry harken harken and widely. 102 �The Flaxen Hobbyhorse A Soliloquy This coming summer embraced as it were shook as over a vast remarkable petals which was believed to control all watery things. Such an affection in their sheaths as I have said so rare and from the ends of opposite winds. No sneaping winds at home and in the coming star no shepherd’s note that leaping be our carriage. Nine changes and to be a boy content as were twinned lambs that frisk and ride the furlongs. Go play boy and as a fat thing I’ll mistake you or wherein the elder sister (crab mouthed) soured herself to death clap thyself my love and here’s a kiss. Young and limber like eggs this velvet jacket green and will you take my money. And in his varying childness cures contempt and clamor as any cottoncoated horseman running to the glass. Thick my blood as any wife who would not live deserves the name. 103 �TO WHICH BELONGING FROM TIME scene i Hoist and from the clock the cat the latter rankled barrier. Petulant and hostage and lemur to her hunch of black. Do him or in a crux do him. scene ii Shoulder and upon her palm the eyrie sight and carry her arms of thin and butter to her might. Dropped into his heart and seared and tore him as he lay there irremovable. scene iii Her carriage wander driven to the basilisk of sleigh her like-reed metal of thought to tower the desolate. Upwards and upwards fixing several in illusion mordant crying. 104 �scene iv Seventeen times she swung her breast a beast into the matter screaming drill the davits throb the suckling’s tore. Play and to be stayed and stayed and stayed the blind feather’s drift. 105 �Lean And By The One With Hats A Ballad High tropical and branchy the liana’s ears awaiting. I care not to get slips of them. And she to the aside sang thus a brown one a brown one her nature is so wide the wool. Rocking to her pinafore she jumped the oath of jelly saying as little skill to fear the smock. Two strong arms of certain care. And she to the aside sang thus a brown one a brown one her nature is so wide the wool. A delicate burden she kept her care (preserve and fall the little snow) while he unbraided where the bugles bent. And she to the aside sang thus a brown one a brown one her nature is so wide the wool. 106 �SUGAR-LOAF AND COWRIE SHELL DISASTER OF HER OTHER PURSE A Play In One Act scene i (The mollusk of her fishermen awaiting. March heaven and proceed.) Do climate here and make unto and settled in the graveyard bar none and to the helm that feeds them. To me to me to me she said her other spur on that transfusion quarried. Dip deep and hold. She kittened him and aureole blue awaiting his deception kissing hugging laughing fighting in his teeth of bone. Where’s ermine and my wake. scene ii (Her tunnel tersely ridden in the blackberry bush’s tree calling hold me down and weakly for my warmth.) 107 �Loosened fetter’s glances at the bay-view’s heightened mall come wallow in the trench of foibles cragged. Slashed velvet and cigar by two of her proposing that her tilt or other tear there-ever be. epilogue Hot liquid petals and pressed stars serried and phalanxed to the tune of it. Bona fide and not to be tethered or exchanged. 108 �Lintel Sapling Gypsy And The Water-Mark Of Climbing Phlox Swelled and stoutened even to her face even to the outline of her face squared the equally luminous shadow accompanying. Dark and roaming of her larger bone she managed on the fleet of five calling for her house of grass removable. Holding out her flaming heart abroad the blood-red star and in her silken eyes. Here was no breakfast for her throat. Pellucid to the top and then her dream of ivory matter singing trim the rhubard flax and senna said. I’d fain forgive though by the weir and flagrant. Cupped and reminded and above his brow he kept him to his fashion’s turmoil lynx legion-tied and not to be sore or weighed upon. 109 �SCARLET IS MINE FOR FEARS PHYSICALLY STRONGER Three Gamelan of Tunes Chimes Metal and Wood scene i Chessmen to her hearing gathered woodstock to her flatter while the acne fell and inner bloom the dingy crevassed ghee. Have not have not have not she speaking another covey and mine. scene ii (Aside) Harrowing for birds and in her screamed flanks awakened rice and other soft things. She said hello dwarf dwarf and leap the barefoot clogs unto her bitters. Up and into he gazed the glass of every these snowflakes sharpening. 110 �scene iii Fertilely and sauntering the pale possessed her swearing by the sumps the low’ring orchid to dispatch. Fury and to celluloid ten thousand words of horn. Float and icely. 111 ��As a cow does she does against the wall of glass �as a cow does she does against the wall of glass Elegance is its own intentional mystery she thought. This is the way to be this way placed in no fixed animated conception. Lists spilled from the room first hopefully. This lump of expression. Half of it was what was already in his mind (the) rest she felt was loaded words was all. 114 �Deft and resilient, et al. � Deft and resilient Deft and resilient hovered or pierced (as the pair was cold). For air often as a plan presses the associate. Can on not to loss spares off. Each one too far (as) though sand bent the village. 116 � At length in kin beatitude At length in kin beatitude must as congenial amulet (person). Pardon me. Cutting the street the embankment (tourniquet). 117 � To cope on the urge remark To cope on the urge remark or where to earth (off) claim her figure. Do sad (not) as a special source caught out to help the soldier. 118 � Which collateral bends the sea Which collateral bends the sea as face co-ordinates time. Lovingly is (lovingly) holocaust though the fault lay somewhat peacefully. 119 � Sends out signs Sends out signs interruption as the spouse does. Precise some drone or workmanship actually. Hung or dug. This as marble reflects a certain deficit. 120 � Everything as she knew Everything as she knew hones as sheds so light from. As ochre scales midway (hustles) always to be to the friend. 121 ��Chests in exact spiritual (ostrich) is the steep person �Chests in exact spiritual (ostrich) is the steep person. 124 �The bundled dish. Woken and woken. Slightly grouse stubbles twirling as a part of things. Nighty spuds laugh. Plate after plate. Sifts of her a.m. 125 �Steels queues (possibly) addict. Tongues wrists claps (guavas) in the old car. 126 �As a path. Gentlelike among the car. Homes sheets like circular (cinder) chairs. 127 �Strides I bruise. Is pigmy fall as she dug the way. 128 �To gaze a nerve. He so dubbed. We two. Crack. Mothers carcass jealousy. 129 ��Suppose deeply offers up �Crop us. Touches peak hope. So stares back (slowly) as her vowel. Chant some. Some. Not all these wisp surface. Where son is concerned. New on this machine. 132 �Cars pass. Realms of trees beat hugs song (you pick). Solicits (other) impression dependencies. Profusely whispers (means) whispers any amount. Up on each knee. Nine ten the mind thinks. 133 �What the friend thought at once the image. Traveling as a family. No here. Verbal (remodeled) nights (wants) the human. Despise her circle circles. Give back her. (Animates. This might.) Oh give. As there. Just discouraged and gives. 134 � Sings around (and so forth). Compare her around. Very telling. Arrives in thin tangible thigh. (Waits) from the inner group. Inherits (shield) for this. This oh want or cost of what penetration. (Neither) her kin. Why wait saying this. 135 � Does it. This intelligence. Some with hair toward the chair. (Slaughter some off as it actually was.) I would care. When clings the head to the bed seam. The brother wears this description also. Also over the telephone. Cherishes knee (very impressed). 136 � Pins it on. (Insemination) of the proud her. Now the me (so) street and I flesh. In which newspaper figures here. Some joined thing. (oh) she understands all right. This much hand life acknowledged through the hand. (Dies) afterwards for just her. 137 � Makes death. (Shrieks) fat (I) am one. Gags or with. (Here) are words. Can’t screams would or not. Not as no (love). 138 � Not dry. Not this couch hatch (hopes) like food. To shell it (us) no less. Neglects all other species contempt. Spans the girl where she straight (shouts) this can love. 139 � Supposing deeps (explore). Barely pleads & retreat. Caught. Flushes & bends. Entitles it “Oh sweet boy”. Resembles him too. Retells year her. The sleep position. (Of absolute person.) How art waits (fails) eyeing depth and depth’s loss. 140 � Man her ins. Stresses chair and bush (lust). Simply her life redness depressed on in. (Was) going to say (cry) touch. (Picks) eyes talks about addresses. She was spellbound. Solves our knowledge. Formulates this suction or what must practice from space. 141 � Suppose deeply offers up. Licks and picks. (Come on.) Pick one. Moved per force (exquisitely) pertains cries or wants. Dark (exiguous) tree. Junks dream (said I’d come). Young girl. Creates sight independently. 142 �Que. This would be it shining internal switch back � Que. This would be it shining internal switch back. 144 � Sway perhaps. Edits toward the cripple boy. Hard places timing eight. Tap its suggestion. Or across town maybe daylight on the synagogue. 145 � Vacucous poise how to. Stretched with implentitude nurse makes up. Others scant attention. Brink one. Two. Necks the truth. Three angry children and how the car would yield to them. 146 � Reined bones. Dip here. One after pink. Look through death does. We eat again. Somehow behind tongues. Would cruise behind. Blocks allowed swallows at. 147 � But buzz or which aperture. In and out. Bubbles climb under. Hugging rations. Joints of growth swell with speed. Deer over the counter. Doing my part. Tearing them out. 148 � This or that wand arm. Satisfaction sinks as I sit on. Shoes and multiple army strata urging and bumping the sabbath. 149 � The jar worth. Forcing and chewing. Angular scribes knowing angularity. These cow shadow. Stout fiction say. How to shuffle them reading and waiting heard softly at the zoo. 150 � Flourishing. Slowly the human teethe. Housing it all in a little room. Containers despair here. 151 � Crunches through the deer. Que. This would be it shining internal switch back. Thursday node attune in dogs which again promise enough. 152 � Reprieve told mouths. Her deanery over the stove. Gliders form a screen duality. Here a door there apart. 153 � Movement after sleep in the forenoon crust. Certain richness as the legs fold up. Size mounts an evening. Cowboys these. Yes withheld from lower scars. My size for once touched. 154 � Interchangeable numbers bearing down hard. Which forehead she always thought when pain was intense. Bands or ribbons or anything. Black adjoining walls whose door swings. Knives and one parakeet with a possible baby engrossed in black. Or mirrors frozen. Be exact. 155 � Couches again home elapse. Tones of your. 156 � Amusing through so tired. Listen. Priests emerge. Lined up as a queen. Surrogate (kites) from infancy. This penal being. 157 � Separates or rub here before the tree. Ladders lay flat to rub before the dog. Tomorrow is next week say bearing another Friday. 158 � To lug. Beauty enough. Ripe eye. Pick up the waltz. Tears are a record. Utterly corn tears. 159 � Participates looking uncluttered. Belong while the arms move. Once alive olives gift. Curls imprints beef. Raise your arms sweetie. Geering unsafety. Or curl again in the back part. 160 ��Early Work was set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. It was released by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991 Robert Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Early work Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press ; State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_070 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. "Preface She stood all divine in her lash Dreaming he loved her The beach and the sun shone brilliantly blue white against the sky Her hands and arms are very clean and that’s another thing she’s conscious of One can do little about an image Lady Nijo Pieces holy in a name letter-pressed, et al. wait her red strega little-flower, et al. fish no mind steak tuna tuna, et al. Sudden wooden shark and lean and visible, et al. As a cow does she does against the wall of glass Deft and resilient, et al. 115 Chests in exact spiritual (ostrich) is the steep person Suppose deeply offers up Que. This would be it shining internal switch back " Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-07-07 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2016 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780985884383 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/a4cda5d837e797bc1fb7205e687783d3.pdf 2e0dab15cdfa40a7d11f405ba2bda44c PDF Text Text “My biggest responsibility to myself as a poet is to remain in the realm of the unknown. I do not write what I already know. My writing arises, and I am constantly surprised by it.” In the late 1980s Gail Sher gave a talk to a group of innovative thinkers in business, the military, and the sciences on her experiments in non-conceptual poetic language. This essay is based on that talk, and draws on her years of Zen and Tibetan Buddhist practice as well as her training as a psychotherapist. In it she shows how her poetry emerges from what she calls the “linguistic unconscious.” The essay includes examples from other writers and artists, and concludes with an illustrative poem of her own. Poetry, Zen and the Linguistic Unconscious Gail Sher Gail Sher is the author of One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers (Penguin) the first of a widely-praised series of books on writing as a practice. Her most innovative writing, and the largest body of her work, however, is her poetry which she has been writing continuously for over 35 years. In addition to her own writing practice, she provides mentoring to writers, consultation to psychotherapists, and psychotherapy to adolescents and adults. For more information on her writing practice, including downloadable texts, visit www.gailsher.com. WHITE �Poetry, Zen, and the Linguistic Unconscious ��Poetry, Zen and the Linguistic Unconscious Gail Sher night crane press 2016 �Copyright 1989-2016, Gail Sher www.gailsher.com All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from copyright owner and publisher. ISBN 978-0-9858843-6-9 �For Brendan ��c o n t e n ts Introduction 1 A Linguistic Understanding 2 A Spiritual Understanding 5 A Psychological Understanding 10 An Ecological Understanding 12 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem 13 Afterword 21 Publications, 1981-2016 25 ��Introduction As a girl I studied piano with a teacher whose idea of “playing with weight” intrigued me. I became aware not only of the heaviness or lightness of my stroke but to sounds (and overtones of sounds) thereby subtly modulated. Delicate gradations became a focus of control. Today, as a poet, it is not much of a stretch for me (regarding words) to be primarily concerned with their relative weight within, and as, a charged environment. In college I studied music, literature and linguistics. I won a Ford Foundation Fellowship to continue with linguistics, but found the subject too abstract. I craved immersion—plush Middle English—[The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Creseide, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]. Yes. Music of a different sort. Later, I entered a Zen community. Music wasn’t allowed. At first I experienced this as a deprivation. But as I settled in, I began to choose it. I followed the monastic schedule and didn’t think overly much about 1 �accomplishing anything. The spirit of “just doing”— just going along without attaching to ideas of gain or progress—became the foundation for my future work with words. Still later, I discovered I needed to write and that I needed to do this outside of the Zen community. To survive the tremendous anxiety of not knowing what I was doing, a spirit of “just doing” came in handy. I would have “writing periods” instead of zazen periods. My vow was to attend them. I couldn’t attach to accomplishing anything because I had nothing in mind to accomplish. The absence of striving radically opened my mind and heart. Gradually this approach morphed into using language in such a way that it functioned not symbolically but synchronistically (as Jung would say). The new “meanings” my language carried (and concerns that it addressed) derived from what I called the linguistic unconscious. A Linguistic Understanding Although Suzuki-roshi told John Cage that he had nothing to say about music or art, Cage still felt Suzuki had led him to see music ‘not as a communication from the artist to an audience, but rather as an activity of sounds in which the artist found a way to let the sounds be themselves.’ 2 �Linguistics is the science of language—the study of the nature and structure of human speech. What I have discovered by entirely receiving what arises during my writing periods is that part of language based in the collective human psyche. It is a universal aspect of language rooted in a substrata of experience that goes beyond the individual’s personal life. I have found that if I tap into this quality of a word, then anyone who listens to my work with the same acuity will be able to “understand” it. The understanding is not semantic. It is not aligned to the particular signification we somewhat automatically attach to words. I use a word stripped of its semantic implications in order to highlight its relationship to vast galaxies of expression often overlooked. Humans are so programmed to use words according to what they “mean” that when the slightest loophole for “meaning” emerges, the mind instantly lights on this and doesn’t see what else is there is. It is important to note that the kind of interaction with language to which I refer is not the same as free association (a psychoanalyst who attended a poetry reading of mine once praised me for my “free association”). Free association is one’s personal string of responses to an idea or image—a manifestation of one’s unique personality or pathology. Jung pointed out that we can free associate to anything, including this morning’s news, but the associations will invariably lead us to our personal complex of emotional/psychological issues. Like Freud, Jung uses 3 �the term unconscious both to describe mental contents which are inaccessible to ordinary awareness and to demarcate a psychic space with its own character, laws and functions. Jung regarded the unconscious as a locus of psychological activity which differed from and was more objective than personal experience since it related directly to the instinctual bases of the human race. The personal unconscious (Freud’s discovery) rests on the collective unconscious (Jung’s discovery, though at the end of his life Jung preferred the term “objective psyche”—the psyche as it is—to “collective unconscious”). The ground from which my work arises and the means by which it communicates is what I call the “linguistic unconscious,” and I think of it as a manifestation of the “objective psyche” Jung described. Wayne Detloff, a Jungian analyst, describes a system that originated in Japan known as the Kototama principle. (Kototama translates as “wordsoul.”) Apparently, as the divine attributes of the emperor’s traditional role were relinquished following World War II, certain secret traditions held by the royal family became available. The Kototama principle is linked with the I Ching, Shintoism and the Kojiki, and is said to date back 4,000 years. According to the Kototama, the sounds are the most central essences, to which trigrams of the I Ching, numbers, elements, color, etc., are related. The sounds contain all the essential possibilities and 4 �thus together form a complete matrix or ‘mirror’ for reflecting almost any content. These sounds are the basis for building words regardless of the specific language. To draw an analogy with chemistry, sounds make up words as the elements make up molecules. Thus, in our framework, the sounds are related in a deep, essential, elemental way to the archetypes.1 The Kototama principle might explain John Cage’s experience of seeing music as an “activity of sounds” in which the artist finds a way to let the sounds be themselves. It also intimates the linguistic unconscious. A Spiritual Understanding Dom Bede Griffiths, an Oxford-educated, English Benedictine monk who founded a monastery/ashram in India in 1955, writes: . . . a Buddhist saying has it: ‘We use words to go beyond words and reach the wordless essence.’ Human language derives from the physical nature of man. ‘It was the nerves and not the intellect which created speech.’ 1 Wayne K. Detloff, “A Study of Authors with Reflections on Language and Jung’s Typology,” The Shaman from Elko: Papers in Honor of Joseph L. Henderson on His Seventyfifth Birthday (San Francisco: C.G. Jung Institute, 1978) 144. 5 �The word Brahman is said to derive from the root brh, which means to swell or to grow. This seems to have signified originally the rising of the word from the depths of the unconscious, the growth into consciousness.2 In their critical introduction to the Poems of Wang Wei, Willis and Tony Barnstone say that the voices one hears in this eighth-century Chinese poet are those one hears in absolute silence. For Wang Wei, silence was both a personal discipline and the issue of his poetry. Indeed, in Wang Wei’s poems there are three levels of silence. The first is the descriptive silence of the outer world. This quiet world is a precondition for the second silence that is spiritual, the silence of the mind. Which mind, purged of distractions, gives rise to the third silence, the silence of deepest meditation. “When thought stops, words halt, and we move through light toward absolute stillness.”3 When words are filled with silence, our ordinary understanding of what is needed to convey meaning completely changes. Some years ago I wrote a prose poem called “The Intimacy of the Silence.” My subject was saturated 2 Bede Griffiths, The Marriage of East and West (Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1982), 62-63. 3 Tony Barnstone & Willis Barnstone, trans., Poems of Wang Wei (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991) xliv. 6 �language and how the writer uses silence to fill her words. She infuses them with her own kind of silence and this is what creates her “voice.” Examples of saturated language from writers I admire are in italics: The Intimacy of the Silence To saturate is to satisfy fully to load to capacity to fill completely with something that permeates an indistinct plentitude which is empty. To saturate language a writer must silence herself so that the word pure passivity of being is. She stiffened a little on the kerb waiting for Durtnall’s van to pass.4 4 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. 7 �Blanchot explains that tone is not the writer’s voice, but the intimacy of the silence she imposes upon the word. He was gazing earnestly at the little boy.5 The silence is still his. He preserves himself within the work. At night she would doze off with morphine and my mother and Grandpa each drank in their separate rooms.6 5 6 Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji. Lucia Berlin, “Dr. H.A. Moynihan” from Phantom Pain. 8 �Silence is felt as concentration. There she was perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross very upright.7 Movement within something enclosed. A small action or detail with elaborate internal activity. Logic is tension and tension is transparent. He threw coffee on the fires, staining the plastic-soft floor deep cave brown.8 Breakups in a contextual, denotative or linguistic sense 7 8 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. Lucia Berlin, “Dr. H.A. Moynihan” from Phantom Pain. 9 �do not affect the stream of concentration continuity which pushes the skin of a word so that saturated it will stand alone. Don’t you notice something rather different about his eyes? 9 When silence is used to fill words, and the gaps between words, the ordinary understanding of what is needed to convey meaning entirely changes. Words stand alone. Sounds are (are allowed to be) themselves. Anything more weakens the message. A Psychological Understanding Heinz Kohut, an innovative psychoanalyst who came to the United States from Vienna during the Second World War, founded a new school within psychoanalysis called Self Psychology. (Self Psychology attaches greater 9 Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji. 10 �significance to the effect of relationships upon our development than the effect of so-called innate instincts like sex and aggression—Freud’s concerns). Kohut was keenly aware that the work of a great artist reflects the central psychological problems of his era. In the following passage from The Restoration of the Self, Kohut directly addresses the issue of fragmented language: . . . the emotional problems of modern man are shifting, and the great modern artists were the first to respond in depth to man’s new emotional task. Just as it is the understimulated child, the insufficiently responded-to child, the daughter deprived of an idealizable mother, the son deprived of an idealizable father . . . so it is the crumbling, decomposing, fragmenting, enfeebled self of this child and, later, the fragile, vulnerable, empty self of the adult that the great artists of the day describe . . . and that they try to heal. The musician of disordered sound, the poet of decomposed language, the painter and sculptor of the fragmented visual and tactile world: they all portray the breakup of the self and through the reassemblage and rearrangement of the fragments, try to create new structures that possess wholeness . . .10 10 Heinz Kohut, The Restoration of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1977) 286. 11 �Kohut points out that while the art of Henry Moore, O’Neill, Picasso, Stravinsky, Pound, and Kafka would have been unintelligible even a hundred years ago, today, precisely because of their intricate and nonsymmetrical order, we admire them for articulating the quality of our suffering. An Ecological Understanding Art, beauty and craft have always drawn on the self-organizing ‘wild’ side of language and mind. —Gary Snyder Gary Snyder claims that the fundamental nature of language is wild because “wild” is a name for the way that phenomena continually actualize themselves. Our ability to tune into that wildness—with greater and greater accuracy rendering it alive by depicting it in our self-reflections—ironically bespeaks of that very measure of health and wholeness, the lack of which so deeply concerns us. Our ability to stay present with the chaos may in the end be our salvation. Although it might seem interesting to delve further into a theoretical exploration of my poetry, it would actually be unhelpful. My work is rarely intellectually based. In fact my biggest responsibility to myself as a poet is to remain in the realm of the unknown. I don’t write what I already know, therefore I don’t write from an idea or concept or from any other analytical place. 12 �My writing arises, and I am constantly surprised by it. Here is a poem I would like to share. It illustrates how the linguistic unconscious arises in me.11 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem In who claim To hold (to) be form (dearest) Or even some grabbing to brace (to) be sectional protecting jacket Saw (too) to cling here chessmen Red air chews 11 In the original version of this talk, I read the poem to the audience. For readers of this essay I suggest reading the poem aloud, slowly. 13 �yes This queer bare mouth Ignites the mother beak Or man on the dais as its mother stroked it Mime is first Part mint part internal march quantity No guy Nor flaps of voice to part this So tentacles or them Retreat itself 14 �Chant wrought side Is lewd or solicits lewd The grit or hear Which comes student Vow & pick here Whereas derives stallion inside Exact were larvae also Eat line green on love The jut will hoarse Christ eventually Renunciant line excepts 15 �A dent from mouth Hand & mung born dark Dram nun To opens in a lower room Brittleness high love Bring the pull strains graced which vesicle Like hills leave to various hills This time the clasp food Or anniversary of a polite act Being a toy building from one kiln 16 �Hex these lake The crock the shepherd on her own children thankfully The woolly flesh Or part which stampedes even music basically And elegance its tenancy Doer logs ferrying cells A rung or yelling underneath the honey Tensile lowing most young Joins others I the unguent I 17 �Tubers & iron even to prepare this This elliptical weaning or long spaying sound Wheels all right this dark math earth Or widow’s phone As hover from the elbows is something growing Bittenness as monk Pat on this Taking one ignite Girl and no 18 �Bond to gum Intense from now The hoist pin Dawns or parson Or go god To swill could These pear and sand year Must sipping thinks Opaque strains together to clap Tries august Calf the inch Lady wife 19 �they fallen birds Crayons geese its unkind horse This alert dots12 12 Gail Sher, (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem (San Francisco: Square Zero Editions, 1982). 20 �Afterword This essay is based on a talk I gave at the School of Management and Strategic Studies at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, California in 1989. Though the school no longer exists, it made a pioneering attempt to introduce its unusual audience (business executives, military officers, research administrators and scholarship participants from the public sector) to innovative ways of thinking and knowing. I am indebted to Dr. Andrew Feenberg for inviting me to address this group. Where else could a poet grappling with the “linguistic unconscious” interface with generals and magnates from the business world? I was prepared for their skepticism, but shouldn’t have been surprised at their openness and receptivity: they were, after all, selected precisely for the creativity and non-conventionality they had demonstrated in their own fields. Although I was not able to articulate then what I might say now about how I work as a poet, much of what I said remains true of my practice and understanding today: 21 �—the Zen spirit of “just doing” (not knowing). —daily writing periods instead of formal zazen. —receiving what arises from levels of awareness that go beyond the personal to the collective. —using words stripped of their conventional, semantic understanding. —allowing the underlying “sound matrix,” the foundation of language, to manifest. —using words to go beyond words. —recognizing silence as both a “personal discipline and the issue of poetry.” —saturating language with one’s own silence. —fragmented language as an articulation of our psychological and social suffering, and an impulse toward its healing. —chaos in language as a reflection of the wildness of nature itself. Today I would simply say that I create space by making room for the mind to go to levels of understanding that language itself can’t get to. My words just barely don’t make sense. That creates a gap, a pause, and in the space of   “not understanding” a deeper realization can occur. 22 �My biggest responsibility as a poet hasn’t changed: it is still to remain in the silence of the unknown. 23 ��GAIL SHER Publications, 1981-2016 p r o s e b o o k s (print) Poetry, Zen and the Linguistic Unconscious. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2016. Print. Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive. New York: Random House/Bell Tower, 2006. Print. The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print. One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print. From a Baker’s Kitchen: Techniques and Recipes for Quality Baking in the Home Kitchen. Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Marlow & Co., 2004. Print. From a Baker’s Kitchen: Techniques and Recipes for Professional Quality Baking in the Home Kitchen. Berkeley: Aris Books, 1984. Print. 25 �p o e t r y b o o k s (print) [also online at gailsher.com] Five Haiku Narratives. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2015. Print. Pale Sky. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2015. Print. Ezekiel. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2015. Print. Sunny Day, Spring. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2014. Print. Mingling the Threefold Sky. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2013. Print. The Twelve Nidānas. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2012. Print. Figures in Blue. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2012. Print. The Bardo Books. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2011. Print. White Bird. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2010. Print. Mother’s Warm Breath. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2010. Print. The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2009. Print. though actually it is the same earth. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2008. Print. The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2008. Print. 26 �Who: A Licchavi. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2007. Print. Calliope. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2007. Print. old dri’s lament. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2007. Print. The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2007. Print. East Wind Melts the Ice. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2007. Print. Watching Slow Flowers. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2006. Print. DOHĀ. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2005. Print. RAGA. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2004. Print. Once There Was Grass. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2004. Print. redwing daylong daylong. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2004. Print. Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2004. Print. Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2002. Print. Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2002. Print. Moon of the Swaying Buds. San Francisco: Edgework, 2002. Print. 27 �Moon of the Swaying Buds (Limited Edition). Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2001. Print. Fifty Jigsawed Bones: A Sea Turtle’s Life. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2001. Print. Saffron Wings. Berkeley: Night Crane Press, 1998. Print. One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! A Year in the Life of a Turtle. Berkeley: Night Crane Press, 1997. Print. Marginalia. Chicago: Rodent Press, 1997. Print. La. Boulder: Rodent Press, 1996. Print. Like a Crane at Night. Berkeley: Night Crane Press, 1996. Print Kuklos. Providence: Paradigm Press, 1995. Print. Cops. Berkeley: Little Dinosaur, 1988. Print. Broke Aide. Providence: Burning Deck, 1985. Print. Rouge to beak having me. Paris: Moving Letters Press, 1983. Print. (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem. San Francisco: Square Zero, 1982. Print. From another point of view the woman seems to be resting. San Francisco: Trike, 1982. Print. p e r i o d i c a ls & a n t h o l o g i e s (print) [also online at gailsher.com] “Excerpt from Blue.” Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. Eds. Beau Beausoleil & Deema K. Shehabi. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012. 71. Print. 28 �“can’t touch you” [with David Rice]. The Tanka Journal 14. Tokyo: Nihon Kajin Club [Japan Tanka Poets’ Club], 1999. 10. Print. “Lovers” [nine poems]. Generator 8.1: A Magazine of International Experimental Visual and Language Material. Cleveland, OH: Generator Press, 1998. n.p. Print. “Autumn” [includes Japanese translation]. Ashiya International Haiku Festa 1998. [Award]. Ashiya, Hyogo, Japan: 1998. 36. Print. “Against the longed-for clouds” [with David Rice]. Tanka Splendor 1997. [Award]. Gualala, CA: AHA Books, 1997. n.p. Print. “Fallout.” [Honorable Mention]. Hiroshima Haiku and Tanka Competition, 1997. n.p. Print. “Silent snow.” One Breath: Haiku Society of America 1995 Members’ Anthology. New York: Haiku Society of America, 1996. 14. Print, “Basho.” Black Bough 8. Flemington, NJ: 1996. 5. Print. “The Paintings of Social Concern.” Juxta 4. Charlottesville, VA: 1996. n.p. Print. “Wipers steady,” “Home at last,” “Night Falls” [corrected version]. Frogpond 19.1. New York: Haiku Society of America, 1996. 8, 20, 52. Print. “Innocent Diversions” Chain 3. Special Topic: Hybrid Genres/Mixed Media. Buffalo: 1996. 183-188. Print. “Night falls,” Woodnotes 28. [Associate Editor: Gail Sher]. Foster City, CA, Spring 1996. 9. Print. 29 �“The boy dozes,” “Winter sun.” Woodnotes 29 [Associate Editor: Gail Sher]. Foster City, CA, Summer, 1996. 10, 22. Print. “George Tooker: Marginalia” [excerpt]. Big Allis 7. Brooklyn: 1996. 30-33. Print. “Autumn leaves.” Ant 3: A Periodical of Autochthonous Poetry & Other Conundrums. Oakland, CA, Summer 1996. n.p. Print. “Resurrection,” “The Seven Sacraments.” Raddle Moon 15. Vancouver, BC, Canada, 1996. 113-118. Print. “Noisy city.” Raw NerVZ 2.4. Aylmer, QC, Canada: Proof Press, Winter 1995-96. 29. Print. “Winds blow briskly this evening.” Five Lines Down: A Tanka Journal. Redwood City, CA: Winter 1995. 12. Print. “Even in his company,” “The wind blows stronger.” Woodnotes, 25. San Francisco: Haiku Poets of Northern California, Summer 1995. 8, 13. Print. “Cross-legged I sit.” Ant 2. Oakland, CA: Summer 1995. n.p. Print. “Home at last” [includes Japanese translation]. Basho Festival Dedicatory Anthology. [Award]. Ueno City, Mie Prefecture, Japan: Master Basho Museum, 1995. n.p. Print. “Night falls.” Woodnotes 26. San Francisco: Haiku Poets of Northern California, Autumn 1995. 24. Print. “Snow buries,” “ A train whistle blows,” “Tassajara Summer 1969.” Woodnotes 27. San Francisco: Haiku Poets of Northern California, Winter 1995. 17, 31, 41. Print. 30 �“Folding its wings.” Modern Haiku, 26.1. Madison, WI: 1995. 10. Print. “Sudden squall,” “Misty rain.” Frogpond 18.3. New York, NY: Haiku Society of America, Autumn 1995. 22, 37. Print. “Night Falls.” Frogpond 18.4. New York, NY: Haiku Society of America, Winter 1995. 21. Print. “Silent snow.” Woodnotes 23. San Francisco: Haiku Poets of Northern California, Winter 1994. 5. Print. “La” [excerpt]. Big Allis 5. New York, 1992. 34-41. Print. “Ex voto” [excerpt from Broke Aide (1985) translated into French by Pierre Alferi & Joseph Simas]. 49+1: Nouveaux Poètes Américains. Eds. Emmanuel Hocquard & Claude Royet-Journoud. Royaumont (France): 1991. 222-223. Print. “Osiris co rider” [from “Kuklos”]. Gallery Works 8. Aptos, CA: 1991. n.p. Print. “Tamarind Esau” [from “Kuklos”]. Big Allis 1. New York: 1989. Print. “W/” Abacus 35. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press: 1988. n.p. Print. “The Fasting Spirit.” [review essay on anorexia nervosa, with excerpts from “Moon of the Swaying Buds”]. The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 8:2. San Francisco: 1988. 61-80. Print. “Cops” [excerpt read by Gail Sher at UCSD November 24, 1987]. Archive Newsletter: The Archive of New Poetry. San Diego: University of California, 1987. 12-14. Print. 31 �“Cops” [excerpt]. Writing 18. Vancouver BC, Canada: 1987. Print. Ten poems. Gallery Works 7. Norwalk, CT: 1987. n.p. Print. “The Lanyard.” Notus: New Writing, 1:1. Ann Arbor: 1986. 13-21. Print. “Which Collateral Bends the Sea,” “Deft and Resilient.” Gallery Works 6. Bronx, NY: 1984. n.p. Print. Poems. Credences: A Journal of Twentieth Century Poetry and Poetics, New Series 3:1. Buffalo: State University of New York, 1984. 84-88. Print. “From Another Point of View the Woman Seems To Be Resting.” Credences: A Journal of Twentieth Century Poetry and Poetics, New Series 2:1, Buffalo: State University of New York, 1982. 9-11. Print. “Suppose deeply offers up.” Hambone 2. Santa Cruz, CA, 1982. 18-22. Print. “River the Office My Own,” “Lord and Give the Necklace Back.” Gallery Works 5. Bronx, NY: 1981. n.p. Print. Poems. Gnome Baker 7 & 8 (1981): n.p. [10 pages]. Print. Nine Pieces. Credences: A Journal of Twentieth Century Poetry and Poetics, New Series 1:1, Buffalo: State University of New York, 1981. 16-20. Print. 32 ��Poetry, Zen and the Linguistic Unconscious was set in adobe garamond, a digital version of the roman typefaces of claude garamond (1499-1561) & the italic typefaces of robert granjon (1513-1589). it was designed by robert slimbach & released by adobe systems in 1989. cover design: bryan kring. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Poetry, Zen and the linguistic unconscious Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-06-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2016 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 97809785884369 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_067 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Introduction A linguistic understanding A spritual understanding A psychological understanding An ecological understanding (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem Afterword Publications, 1981-2016 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 45 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/3d72e6588fcf2d4278ad335ccf7cd00a.pdf 297eaa306531d333b24f05d8133a8431 PDF Text Text “I remember many poems by Philip Whalen and Diane di Prima also written at Tassajara … Of all the writing Tassajara has inspired though, Gail Sher’s must be the most fully generated out of that canyon, its geothermal forces, its healing hot springs.” —andrew schelling Gail Sher is an ordained lay disciple of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, the person credited with bringing Soto Zen Buddhism to the West. She practiced Zen at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, San Francisco City Center and the Berkeley Zen Center alternately for 11 years. Although all of her writing draws on her practice of Buddhism, two of her works come directly out of her experience at Tassajara: Moon of the Swaying Buds, an autobiographical account written in the ancient Japanese form of haibun (prose combined with haiku) and this work, Pale Sky, a poetic evocation of the Tassajara zendo during an intensive week-long meditation retreat on the day Suzuki Roshi died. Pale Sky Gail Sher writes, teaches and practices psychotherapy in San Francisco’s East Bay. For more information, visit www.gailsher.com. GAIL SHER �Pale Sky �Also by Gail Sher PROSE One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive From a Baker’s Kitchen POETRY Five Haiku Narratives Ezekiel Sunny Day, Spring Mingling the Threefold Sky The Twelve Nidānas Figures in Blue The Bardo Books White Bird Mother’s Warm Breath The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries though actually it is the same earth East Wind Melts the Ice The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call old dri’s lament Calliope Who: A Licchavi Watching Slow Flowers DOHA Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse redwind daylong daylong Once There Was Grass RAGA Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms Moon of The Swaying Buds Marginalia La Kuklos Cops Broke Aide Rouge to Beak Having Me (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem From Another Point of View The Woman Seems to Be Resting �Pale Sky Gail Sher Night Crane Press 2015 �Copyright 2015 Gail Sher www.gailsher.com All rights reserved Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permisssion from the copyright owner and publisher. ISBN: 978-0-9858843-7-6 �for Brendan ��In Memory of My Teacher Shunryu Suzuki-roshi May 18, 1904—December 4, 1971 ��Rohatsu Sesshin December 4, 1971 1 ��CLANG CLANG clang clang clang clang clang clang. The obstreperous bell, having awakened her at its loudest, was fading. Eliza gazed into the sky. Millions. Trillions. Gazillions of unbelievably sparkling stars shone from a blanket of blackness. “This blackness is endless and arises from inside me,” she sighed wistfully. She lay staring at a star and, beyond it, the rising triangle of some nameless constellation. 3 �From the first moment I enter the zendo1 I am changed. The fragrance, the clarity stir a deadness in me that I’ve lugged around and lugged around. I recognize it with my teeth, behind my ears, between my toes, the bottoms of my feet. It is startling and immediate. 1 See Glossary for italicized Buddhist terms. 4 �The same sense—almost a nostalgia—filters through the air, the grounds, the trees. People talking, jays cawing. It’s just a caw but its rawness makes a point and repeats the point and repeats the point. I’m hearing the empty beginning, before the person or the jay get involved. Even the air rattles with its mind. 5 �The sound is fresh. It stays cool in the heat. Beyond immaculate, its cleanness is original. The wind in the trees is crisper. Leaves are more defined. Colors are subtler as if elsewhere, even elsewhere in the same range of mountains, this feeling is quelled by the lack of an inherited intelligence. The legacy of mind, big mind, Zen mind, establishes the legitimacy, even of the pansies. 6 �Traipsing in my getas down the rain-drenched path, my muscles know precisely the beyond-knowing of its importance. Like a nocturnal bird seeks a safe place to rest during the day in a vacant attic. Chirps and caws sprinkle through the air as dawn hits the trees and pale sky colors the brick wall that I am staring at. It’s this path but it’s the sky and the eon’s sky and the yuga’s sky and all the yugas’ skies. 7 �“O n e . . .” she said mentally, listening to the soft stream of air through her nostrils. “T w o . . .” started at the top while the air was in her nose but the sound, slower now and more nasal, seemed to be coming from her throat. “T h r e e . . .” though the “three” came as an afterthought. The person to her right was leaning forward on his knees trying to fit a third zafu under his buttocks, but the second one kept slipping out making the third one lopsided. Eliza stayed still. Steadying her gaze she continued counting exhales, but her mind went to the day— she’d so wanted to make a personal connection. 8 �“Is there anything I should bring?” She twiddled a strand of hair too tightly around a finger. He yawned with his jaw, without opening his mouth. “You’ll be doing the personal lists.” It wasn’t really an answer. Then he’d simply stood absorbed in looking out. She wished he wouldn’t shift around on his pillows so much. 9 �“This morning early Roshi, peacefully, died. We continue our efforts along with all beings.” The words entered the hall toward the beginning of second period. Silence. More silence. Bristling silence. But it was soft. New Year’s Eve listen— snow is falling 10 �We just sit. It is like something happening in the great sky. To express our way along with all beings—we sit for this and it will always be the same. Whatever kind of bird, the sky doesn’t care. That is the mind transmitted from the Buddha to us. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, practicing deeply Prajña Paramita . . . 11 �“How is your practice?” Her dokusan had been short. “It’s so young!” she’d crooned afterwards, seeing a budding gingko bursting from itself, full of intention and purpose. Its fragile limbs, every which way, jutted out awkwardly. Extending her finger, gently to touch the blossoms, she was startled but felt an inexpressible affection for the plant. 12 �“The mind of the great sage of India is intimately transmitted from west to east,” began the Roshi, carefully reading the translation. It had been a typical sesshin day. Hot afternoon sun poured through the zendo windows. He was winding down a series on the Sandokai, an ancient Chinese poem routinely chanted in the liturgy. Clearly enjoying the task, he’d set up a blackboard next to his seat where he wrote and explained each of Sekito Kisen’s characters. Eliza wasn’t listening. Instead she was attending to him. “I made it up,” he grinned, when a student asked about a word. 13 �“Is intimately transmitted,” the Roshi continued. “Mitsuni means ‘exactly, without a gap between the two.’ The main purpose of the Sandokai is to show reality from two sides.” It had rained till dawn, a warm summery rain, and the zendo was starting to feel stuffy. “As I said, san means ‘many’; do means ‘one.’ ” “What does it matter? I don’t care about the Japanese.” “So ‘many’ is right, and ‘one’ is right,” she heard him say a few minutes later. She was staring out the window. 14 �“Do you have question?” It woke her up. “Roshi, couldn’t we just work from the Japanese and forget the English translation?” It was a man. One of the older students. “How could he want even more fussing?” her mind railed. Yes he was trying to do that, the Roshi explained. The poem was full of technical terms that without understanding . . . “O my god.” She closed her eyes to try to retrieve her centeredness. “O my god.” It came again, less strong but still there. “O my god . . . ” started to arise. “how deep is it now? has it buried the pampas grass yet?” 15 �The shijo rings. Early-morning zazen is over. “But it’s not over. It’s never over. Morning zazen is till the end of time, but we pretend it’s over because there are things we need to do.” The bell brings me back. I put my rakusu on my head, chant the Robe Chant, let down my rakusu, fluff my cushion and line up in the aisle for prostrations. Welcoming dawn, the light, the creek—all of this becomes a mere extension of me. 16 �“The morning gaggle of birds is like the bottom of the ocean.” She was straightening her mat getting ready for the sutras. A band of sun had caught a passing cloud and light trembled across her row. These sermons of the Buddha, the “warp” of the dharma literally—“the never-ending of it all,” Eliza said to herself, not knowing exactly what she wanted from herself or how she wanted to see herself. “no, not the scarlet peach blooms, it’s the forsythia . . . ” I say to the flower-lady 17 �Her mind flashed to the Roshi—the way he smiled, the way he leaned a little forward when he was thinking how to say, the way he misused English so that it made more sense, though it didn’t make sense and yet it sparkled and was wonderful. A dog had stopped and was studying the sky, panting with its tongue to one side. “I know! I KNOW! He magnificently filled our lives and now we are left simply with our lives.” She was vaguely aware of some jays squawking as if they were fighting, but she deliberately chose to ignore it. 18 �The umpan announces breakfast. Zendo students, returning to their seats, open their oryokis. Buddha, born at Kapilavastu, attained the Way at Magadha, preached at Varanashi, entered Nirvana at Kushinagara. Now as we spread the bowls of the Buddha Tathagatha we make our vows together with all beings; we and this food and our eating are vacant. The sound of the creek, spoons against bowls, the caw of a jay, more caws from farther-off jays. 19 �The palpable formality of the meal at a certain moment is relaxed. “How do you feel?” her roommate was asking, searching her face with concern. “You fainted, you know. When I came back to change, you were on the floor in the bathroom.” Eliza was still wearing her sweaty under-kimono. “What time is it?” From the sun she guessed it would be late afternoon. “It’s after tea, almost bath time. You’ve slept the whole day.” Eliza smiled. beyond the boughs white, white sails late sun floods through the window 20 �I sleep. I sleep deeply and soundly and when I wake—“Is that snow?” In the mountains sometimes a snow like this falls and the leaves turn white like flowers. Then the quiet. The air, composed of enormous quiet, melds into sky with its even larger quiet. I reach to touch the sky—beautiful, clean, silent. I feel I’ve slept close to it and all day long keep close to it. 21 �“Eliza-san! I hardly recognized you with your chopped-off hair.” “I’m very weak.” She’d just woken up from another long sleep. “You’re even prettier. Like a boy,” Christiana said softly. When she left she continued to just lay there. “It must be after eleven,” she thought, nestling her head in the space between her elbow. The morning sky was a single blue combed with cloud and a slip of moon. 22 �“She fits in here,” Eliza mused, recalling Christiana’s mock-turtle t-shirt and how it morphed to some metallic fabric with shells and stones scattered as in the sea. A horse fly nosed her leg. It was green. She watched its body paused in the sun for a long time. She rolled over on her side. Stagnant, flea-filled pools were beginning to congeal in the creekbed. The irises, she saw, were a watery blue, the whites so pink they appeared sore. 23 �The shijo sounds thrice and off that sound is sitting. Sitting sitting sitting till it sounds again, two times. Then kinhin, which is slow—not exactly walking but anyway moving till the shijo signals another period of zazen. I place my feet carefully. I adjust my mudra, straighten my spine, make my half-steps sharp. Yes it is important. No it’s not important. 24 �“Hey, girl!” Christiana’s cheeks, rosy from her walk and covered with little droplets, were swelling with pleasure as she entered. Eliza stood at the window staring at a thunderous sky. “Is it alright?” Half removing her gear, half plopping on a bed, she was referring to the fact that the bed belonged to a roommate. Immediately she lit a lamp. A cozy glow warmed the room. “I wouldn’t have thought of it,” Eliza muttered, still standing by the window looking stranded. She wondered why such a simple thing as lighting a lamp in a darkening room would not have occurred to her. 25 �It is drizzly when we leave the hall. Oppressive wetness mirrors my mood. The break is a little longer but there’s nothing I want to do. I straighten my room. Wash. The stranded feeling intensifies. A hawk flies over flapping its large wings. Soon another one just like it flies in the same direction. 26 �Along with everyone Eliza spread her oryoki—cloths, bowls, chopsticks, spoon and her handmade eel-like setsu. “For our sakes the clams and fishes give themselves unselfishly.” “I am so unworthy. I am SO unworthy. Please fish, take yourselves back.” She felt herself starting to cry. She remembered the Roshi’s smile. “In the impossibility of being worthy, I must somehow be worthy.” 27 �Chanting begins. Buddha bowl raised and cradled in my fingers I am taking in this privilege and, at the same time, seeing the Roshi’s back bending over boulders he is placing in the creekbed. “He’s actually very jolly,” I notice, watching his limber body plying the eroded mud. Butterflies flutter near iris whose leaves cast faint shadows. Sometimes his jisha spreads a cool, water-soaked cloth on the top of his head. 28 �She’d been washing lettuce on the kitchen’s back deck. Slim and erect Christiana, punctually, had delivered the vegetables for the day. She’d catch Eliza’s eye. It made Eliza’s morning. shhhh . . . bees . . . how white! the first blossom 29 �Eliza attached the hood to her raincoat and tugged on her boots. “Isn’t winter the most beautiful!” Swaths of cloud shone against the sky like black and silver mackerels. “The land and sky are bleeding into one another and into our quiet,” she yawned dreamily. “Listen . . . The parent birds are teaching their babies how to chirp”—she’d heard that . . . right at this spot—that fledglings must be taught—that chirping must be taught! The air smelled new and the silence was padded. 30 �“Hey! Let’s have a hair-cut.” Summer session had ended. The day was fair. A few lenticular clouds, small and thick, floating around was all. “You go first,” Eliza laughed, examining her friend. Dark black hair, parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears, poked out like dislocated ear muffs. The barber looked to be in his twenties. He had on chinos and soft leather loafers with no socks. 31 �“Next session I might be anja,” Christiana beamed, scooting back in her chair. Eliza, standing, just stared at her in the mirror. From the look they exchanged it was clear how well they understood each other. “Will Okusan be coming?” Christiana shrugged. “I hope so. He listens to her. Sometimes.” “How short are you going?” Piles of hair were spilling to the floor. Christiana winked. 32 �“Are you wanting to be ordained?” A seagull wheeled and barked overhead. Then a second one, slowly, circled through the air. “I AM ordained and have been since beginningless time,” Eliza bellowed. This truth belonged to her most reserved privacy. She studied the hem of her skirt. The stitching had come loose and a section flapped free. “I came here to get ordained,” averred Christiana. 33 �“I think you might be doan.” “No seriously, I can’t stand her” came a voice through the warm salt air. Two girls in flip-flops. One, hunched over her cell phone, looked to be texting. The other, the one who’d said, “No seriously,” was, from a thick wad of curls, scavenging some hairpins. A swallow swooped and dived overhead. “No seriously,” Eliza grinned. “How must it be for you—guys hitting on you a hundred times a day.” “Not just guys.” 34 �Eliza was still asleep, her back toward Christiana. The top of the latter’s quilt draped loosely around her body but it had worked its way down to just below her t-shirt. She lay on her side, knees folded, feet sticking out where the quilt stopped. Christiana went to wash. Her movements had roused Eliza who with eyes open continued to lay still. From the light she could tell that they had napped for several hours. “Did you have something you need to do?” she called over. “Oh! You’re up.” Christiana laughed. “No. It’s just a habit.” Day sounds from below rose in a kind of time warp. “It’s so beautiful.” She’d moved closer to the window. 35 �“You’re so beautiful!” Indeed Christiana’s beauty had, along with its gentleness, an almost freightening quality. Christiana joined her on the bed. “I know,” she said, after staring out for a long while, then, realizing her mistake, blushed. 36 �Plumping her cushions, Eliza, kneeling, kept mindlessly plumping while others were getting settled. The juddering sun from her break was already disappearing. “The Buddha’s Way is endless. I vow to attain it,” she reminded herself, encouraging herself, but even those words, which she felt to the core and sensed they held the answer . . . “Since the Buddha attained it, there must be a way to attain it,” she thought, before remembering that that’s what she was doing here. 37 �Was it what she was doing here? “I think about my girl,” smirked a kitchen friend, shrugging his broad shoulders. He’d pulled out a photo. A tall, thin beauty wearing a jacket over a kilt and knee-high boots was hiking across a fen. Her expression—coy, radiant, full of life and living—he’d caught in a backward glance. “You’re useless. Useless,” she scolded her underkimono, yanking its several closures. She was tugging on a sweater. 38 �“Did you knit it?” Eliza flushed. “It was on sale,” she’d admitted sheepishly. A hollow cackle of a crow pierced the air, its call bringing back the beginning of another period. Long low light gradually opened and settled like fur on the outlines of the trees. “The quiet too is sitting. It has will and won’t be budged.” 39 �“You should tell the Roshi. He asks about your practice.” Her eyes popped open. There was a stiffness around the rims creating a buzz-like thought, but it wasn’t a thought. It was an intensity. “The Roshi is dead. You should have told him a long time ago.” The intensity was a knife and it was digging behind her eyes prying up something terrifying. 40 �SMACK. A loud crack filled the hall. Then a second one, though in the delay, since she’d forgotten there’d be another, it too came as a shock. SMACK. SMACK. This time it was quick. From the corner of her eye she thought she could see the carrier entering her aisle. “Should I bow?” She did feel sleepy and the kyosaku did help. No one else was asking so he was approaching fast. Instinctively she gashoed. The stick touched then hit, touched the other shoulder then hit. She bowed again feeling the person, stick turned lengthwise and raised overhead, likewise bowing, honoring her practice. For a split second she could also honor her practice. 41 �“I didn’t realize,” Eliza thought, as she carefully placed one foot at a time on the cold clean wood between the rows of cushions. Rain was falling in a slow patter soaking the world outside. All her ideas about ordination, her plans about how she would organize her life—all this now struck her as childish. She also knew there was something she hadn’t understood, maybe now even less . . . but it was coming from the inside, not from the outside, as had everything in her life previously. Even the teachings, even Buddhism—it felt like she was coming closer because from the inside she felt closer, more certain, more solid. “It’s just that I’m me. First I need to be me.” A scrub jay cawed. Then cawed again. Against the drips it sounded bereft. 42 �It rains. The color of no sky peers from a hollow hole. “A gentle sound, full of patience,” I marvel, hearing the classical music station play a glorious, lilting trumpet concerto. The air is alive with crickets. The field redolent with blue. A young bird shrieks. The weather by late afternoon has grown worse. 43 �“Maybe they are robins,” I think, picturing plump little breasts hopping about, searching for food. There are fewer of them now. How must they manage I wonder. I shut my eyes and listen to the cheeps. Frail thin things. windy night loosely fastened beyond the moor – to whom might it belong 44 �“Was that a moan?” The person to Eliza’s right had started squirming again. Her head shot to the right. “It’s like a lovely white seashell!” Light from the window was falling on the near side of his body. “You sounded just like Roshi—just then, when you said that”—the memory of having said that—then, touching her knee—“There is something the matter here.” She wished she could remember his name. 45 �It bothered her that she forgot. And others whose names or even persons were, for her, as if they had never existed. “And me too. I’m an ‘other.’ How many people care?” “The point is for me to care,” but her heart was cold. She couldn’t find her caring. that crow where we hang the wash looks at me looks away 46 �She looked out at the rain waiting for it to break and saw a crow, head bowed, feathers so wet they shone like tar. She wanted the bird to move, but it sat sodden and seemingly miserable. There was no wind. The branches of a tree arching to the ground were quiet, as if lost in thought. Occasionally a bird landed unsteadily. The branch quivered slightly. 47 �“What is it?” Eliza muttered, leaning on her broom. She had fifteen minutes. ALL MY ANCIENT TWISTED KARMA . . . Inside her sat a gigantic space, and inside it was waiting. Around the waiting was dread, but the dread wasn’t of anything . . . ALL MY ANCIENT TWISTED KARMA . . . the words came louder and felt more pressing. She opened her door and swept the dirt outside. Then she stepped outside and swept the stairs in front of her cabin. “O gone! Please please gone! Sva-ha sva-ha sva-ha sva-ha,” she’d prayed, fervently, again and again, with all her gatherable power. 48 �“Eliza, I must caution you.” “Caution me? About what?” But the “what” was clear as day. Eliza stiffled a groan. “I don’t have the right to probe into your feelings,” Christiana had finally said, modifying her tone. “I was wearing a dress—blowing away some invisible speck—and a thin white cardigan, I remember.” 49 �Playing the scene again, she watched the darkness loosen from the sky, a cold cobalt blue. The hour being late it was almost hard to see. “But it’s loud on the inside. Its soul is loud,” she whispered. The sound, ineffable, INELUCTABLE, triggered a fear that this might be all she had. 50 �“How beautiful,” she sighed, gazing at a strange, mother-of-pearl shell of white, fleecy cloud suspended above her head in the middle of darkening sky. Finally it was bath time. “It’s because of the mountains that night here falls so quickly.” She glanced up hoping to spot the shell but it had vanished. “I can feel the sky’s reluctance.” She could also feel her own—and a large unnamable—she was about to say “unwillingness” but more accurate would be “refusal.” Yes refusal. She not only refused to be here but refused to face her almost-total refusal to be here. “But I do want to be here.” Later, on her bed, waiting for the han to announce evening zazen, she began to wonder if she could possibly continue to be here. 51 �In the stall Eliza paused, took off her kimono, then took off her jibon, then put back on her kimono. Her tank top remained but its spaghetti straps, stretched to the point of drooping, even under her jibon had allowed her skinniness to show. “Avalokiteshavara Bodhisattva, practicing deeply Prajña Paramita . . . ” Oceans of birds, with clear, concise calls, cried out in the blackness. 52 �Suddenly she had enough. “I can do this and it’s important. I will do it and it’s very very important.” The storm had stopped but sails of rain hung between her and the hills. After supper there would be several more periods and after that one was encouraged to stay on, to avail oneself of the energy, the silence, the accumulated force of accumulated days of effort. Through the setting sun one cloud, suffused with dulled-pink, burned. 53 �Clappers sound, supper begins. The birds were quiet, the trees sulking. Christiana, standing by a window, was trying to see if the shirt she was making fit her properly. “I like to sew,” she’d explained. They had never formally met. Eliza sat down but couldn’t think of anything to say. “I like to sew too.” “What are you making?” Christiana asked easily, seemingly truly interested. “Nothing. I’m just making lines.” “Can I see?” She walked over to the corner of the table where Eliza had placed her basket. “It’s very beautiful.” Eliza felt her suddenly awake to her. Billowy sun spread light on her cloth and the assortment of utensils she’d laid out on the wooden ledge. 54 �“It’s a sycamore. Though it looks like a mulberry. Have you ever seen one so big?” Between her thumb and her forefinger she twirled the fat stem as they slowly climbed her hill. “Well, let’s talk about you now,” Eliza urged, contorting her neck as if she wanted physically to banish something that was bothering her. Then, seeing the sun ricocheting off a leaf—a huge red maple with wide fingers and knobby veins—she had a moment of complete clarity. 55 �“Did you make it!” A white OM in a yellow circle lay on Christiana’s bed. Around this was a white six-pointed star, also bordered in yellow, and around that an eighteenpointed star of yellow and red that seemed to fold out in pleats like a Japanese fan. Around that were bands of increasingly intense red, as if the light from the star, as it progressed further and further out, grew darker, verging on black toward the edges. The whole, intricately quilted by hand, was rimmed with a thin black and white design. “It’s a mandala,” Christiana explained. “From when I was in Japan.” “It’s stunning.” “And your room is stunning.” Along with the platform bed there was a Japanese desk, zafu, two kerosene lamps, an old Amish rug and in the corner a paulownia tansu. 56 �The summer practice period essentially over, the closing sesshin had been everywhere in the air. On the surface was the “chatter”—a kind of gathering buzy-ness. Underneath that was silence, the solidification of the intention that had brought them here in the first place. No one said anything, but there was a general coming-to-terms. One could smell it in the air, taste it in the heat. Even in the zendo there were fewer shiftings-around, clearing of throats, swishing away of flies. 57 �BOP. There it was. “I should leave now,” she kept telling herself, but she kept not leaving, as if waiting for something. High in the night, stars, exuberantly, ecstatically, coruscated. “Where am I?” Eliza thought, rubbing her eyes. She rolled on her side, drew her knees to her chest and shoved her hands between them. “What will I do?” She was still fully dressed. 58 �It pours. Buckets of water hit the window hard. I am seated on my zafu, robes tucked under a thin blanket which I allow myself because it is night and sesshin and “it does no harm,” I tell myself. No one else has a blanket. No one else seems to be struggling. Many seem actually to be relishing the opportunity to try harder, practice longer, exhaust themselves to an extent unavailable in the daily monastic routine. 59 �Zazen ends. Kinhin begins. Tiredness and rain is all. Our steps become one with cavernous, thunderous pounding. They occur together—both the steps that we take together and the steps plus the sound which, right now, as exhaustion peaks and the day draws to an end, presses time into forever. crows at four, sparrows at five thus I reckon the endless winter night 60 �When she’d first arrived it had been spring—a lovely, light-hearted spring. The air smelled green and the sky, drenched with such birdsong and life . . . The tops of trees against a bluing swell of space shook in the warmth of a burgeoning westerly wind, and— “It’s spring! Real spring,” everyone shouted. 61 �The weather had never been so beautiful! Everywhere the air, suffused with steam rising from the earth, shimmered. Old grass and the emerging needles of new grass, gnarled trees with their wodges of ripening leaves . . . It’d been that time of year, the turning point of light, when the meadow was high and Eliza had watched the surfing birds’ wings and the colors on each wing’s underside. 62 �“They look all the more lovely from a distance,” she exuded. She’d been squatting at the end of a row of peas trying to tuck her black hair both behind her ears and under her sun hat. Excitement, an almost being-in-love excitement, had made her touch the earth. For a long while she just stayed, kneeling, inhaling, listening to the birds, the wind and the earth itself, whose quiet and clean fresh richness filled her. 63 �“DON’T MOVE.” The Head Monk’s voice pierced the hall. Shock shot up her spine. “DON’T MOVE.” The voice came again, highpitched and more emphatic. Her slouch straightened, her spine felt hot and her blood chased something relentless. No one breathed. Or they did but the silence, now bottomless, absorbed it. The period stretched on. And stretched on. She forgot that it would end. 64 �Glossary 65 �Anja. The one of the Roshi’s two personal assistants who takes care of matters pertaining to his space. Clappers. The taku (clappers) are small pieces of hard wood approximately two by two by ten. They are held parallel and struck together making a sharp clack. Doan. One of a small group of students whose job for the practice period is to attend to the monastery’s “sound system” (including the bells and drums accompanying formal services) and to enforce the daily schedule. Dokusan. A Soto Zen term for sanzen, a private interview with one’s teacher. Gasho. A Buddhst gesture of greeting, palms of hands placed together. Han. A thick rectangular wooden board suspended by cords outside the zendo and struck with a wooden mallet. The resulting sound, hollow and sharp, creates a haunting echo. 66 �Jibon. A vest-like undergarment worn under a kimono or sitting robe when a full-length underrobe would be either too hot or too heavy. Jisha. The one of the Roshi’s two personal assistants who takes care of matters pertaining to his time. Kinhin. The continuation of the practice of zazen done between formal periods of seated zazen. It consists of very slow (half-steps) walking. Kyosaku. In the Soto school a kyosaku is a flat wooden stick used during zazen to remedy sleepiness or lapses of concentration. The kyosaku is always administered at the meditator’s request by way of bowing one’s head and putting up the palms in gassho and then exposing each shoulder to be struck in turn. Mudra. Symbolic hand gestures associated especially with tantric meditation practices. Oryoki. The oryoki consists of three nested bowls, a packet of eating utensils (chopsticks, spoon and setsu), a cotton napkin and a wrapping cloth which 67 �also serves as a placemat. Each student is provided with an oryoki and oryoki instruction upon arrival at a monastery (otherwise one cannot eat in the zendo). Thereafter the oryoki is in one’s care. Prajña Paramita Sutra. Known as the “Heart Sutra” the Prajña Paramita Sutra is the classical condensation of the six-hundred-volume Prajña Paramita literature, translated into Chinese by Hsüan-tang in the seventh century. Rakusu. A monastic or lay biblike vestment, a miniature version of the kesa or priest robe. Rest Days. In Japanese Zen monasteries days with either a 4 or 9 in them are designated “rest days.” Time for sleep is lengthened slightly, there is no formal noon meal and no work periods at all. Most of the day—all the time between the end of breakfast in the zendo and a somewhat festive supper—is considered “personal time” to be spent as one wishes. Robe Chant. “I wear the robe of liberation, the formless field of benefaction, the teachings of the 68 �Tathagatha, saving all the many beings.” This verse of the rakusu is recited at dawn when priests put on their kesas and lay people their rakusus. It is also chanted privately whenever these garments are donned. The kesa and rakusu are the robes of the Buddha, treated respectfully and worn on all religious occasions. Rohatsu. The Japanese word for “eighth day of the twelfth month.” December 8 has come to be the day Japanese Buddhists observe the enlightenment of the historical Buddha. Rohatsu Sesshin. In Japanese Zen monasteries, the Rohatsu is the last day of a week-long sesshin, an intensive mediation retreat in which all of one’s waking time is dedicated to meditation. Traditionally each evening’s meditation period is to be longer than the previous evening’s. On the seventh night, meditation continues through the night and the sesshin ends after breakfast on the eighth morning. Roshi. Historically the term roshi has been applied as a respectful honorific to a significantly older Zen 69 �teacher considered to have matured in wisdom and to have attained a superior understanding and expression of the dharma. Nevertheless, in some modern Zen schools it is applied as a general title for a teacher regardless of the age of the individual who receives it. Seiza. A traditional Japanese sitting posture wherein one’s body rests on the knees and shins. Setsu. A tool with a linen tip for cleaning one’s oryoki bowls during a zendo meal. Shijo. The shijo (Cease and Be Quiet) is about nine inches high and struck by a doan three times to signal the beginning of a period of zazen, twice to signal kinhin, and once to signal that another event is about to begin. Sutra. The word sutra, a discourse of the Buddha (literally “a thread on which jewels are strung”) loosely refers to an old Buddhist scripture or scripture to be chanted. Umpan. The umpan (Cloud Plate) is a bronze plate 70 �shaped like a fleur-de-lis. It hangs from cords in the kitchen and is struck with a hard wooden mallet to produce a clangorous sound signaling meals. Zazen. The practice of sitting erect on cushions, on a low bench, or in a chair. In Soto Zen zazen is keyed to the breaths and takes the form either of counting them from one to ten or of shikantaza (sitting with no theme). “Zazen is itself enlightenment,” Dogen Kigen Zenji never tired of saying. This means that body and mind have dropped away and they continue to drop away endlessly. The self is forgotten and it continues to be forgotten more and more completely throughout all time. Zen. A Japanese Buddhist school concerned with directly realizing the true nature of one’s mind. Zendo. Zen meditation hall. 71 �Pale Sky is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice; it was released by Adobe Systems in 1990. Cover design: Bryan Kring � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Pale sky Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-06-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2015 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_066 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 81 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/223b8b55e299c509ab518d4e36e08bb6.pdf feb97f21f2931a407b51769d174d556f PDF Text Text Who, a Licchavi Who_text.indd 1 1/24/08 6:38:56 PM �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 Who_text.indd 2 1/24/08 6:38:57 PM �Who, a Licchavi Gail Sher Q night crane press 2007 Who_text.indd 3 1/24/08 6:38:57 PM �Copyright 2007, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. isbn: 978– 0– 9794721– 2– 1 Who_text.indd 4 1/24/08 6:38:57 PM �For Brendan Who_text.indd 5 1/24/08 6:38:57 PM �Who_text.indd 6 1/24/08 6:38:57 PM �Who, a Licchavi Who_text.indd 7 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �Who_text.indd 8 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �Cakravartin dear man blue man cold in the tiger her paw her dandelion sun from earth to clay dear dear ear � Who_text.indd 1 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �to he old river eating death up now in the lake its essence[ness] shattered I cry cats from the treatise of each night on-high kündün honey-breasts kündün � Who_text.indd 2 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �white-swallow light drowns the sweltering dawn waters the jewel on the sea to be of Ah o tree of kings to fling the afterbirth high Ah gold Ah in-the-lead � Who_text.indd 3 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �who, a Licchavi two hundred cuttings bloom in his left ear o lama of the rain of the welcoming queen door her kiss as the well dries up � Who_text.indd 4 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �stop it! (to the monk tugging on my foot) who, in hide hat, yanks my foot again Palden Lhamo riding on her mule clubs him, hurts him, rubs his hurt hand � Who_text.indd 5 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �put blood into your pocket mend a crick of hair marry the gases in the graveyard a saffron gulp swallows and kills as I, in sky, consider the threefold kings � Who_text.indd 6 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �say I, I, I faces erect carved to three stone we, heel and calf, whomever tongues the monkey yield chewing crackers for thirst chewing corn of grayish woolen � Who_text.indd 7 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �blind cow release your herd two cow two deft (mysterious) princess as I, Lama Drom, bringing cow words sodomy-in-blood to fuse the calf together � Who_text.indd 8 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �sweet guru said Kublai sweet Chogyal said Pakpa my statue speaks (marches) farmers to the sea my thousand neck halo of tall (fish) in blue refrain rowers sing � Who_text.indd 9 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �of vulture from vultures passed o mother of the rock wing of the four-faced bird I cometh in a shell from the valley of my brother he of ears belly of wood 10 Who_text.indd 10 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �fornicate not o brethren from the ghosts we two in the bearing of high sea Pehar and my doll cook clouds on the palace floor young boar in the shadow of its milk meadow spry and beam 11 Who_text.indd 11 1/24/08 6:38:58 PM �be raven Mahakala (sweet) Mahakala be Tall Deer rock be parental maturity hear the grass at midnight creep (in early sky a hawk will wail) this is the service of deer this is the service (of ones) gifted with swift feet 12 Who_text.indd 12 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �I’m back o beauteous woodland Sadakasari of crystal paper to your skull I paste my hair fearing my chalice of wood 13 Who_text.indd 13 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �I enter her womb (her dream of precious books) father’s dream of Gendün Drup’s I’m on retreat for now o Moses (Moses) on an old layman’s skull entrust this earth to those with darkened skin 14 Who_text.indd 14 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �pure pearl mother yogini of blue flowerlands hands of conch (webbed fingers in their lair) at the bottom of your voice on the soles of your feet in heart I sit holy evergreens towering below my rock 15 Who_text.indd 15 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �be safe from wild dogs be safe from tigers be safe from bears sweet mother (I write) touching lace its robes of hair to walk her heart this little hair of heart one ray dries in the flowering pasture 16 Who_text.indd 16 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �robes are cloud mountains crystal skylark from HUM comes black o Lhamo of two arms old forest mother to be a tree alive inert in the precept where I wither 17 Who_text.indd 17 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �I light lamps my father puts down words Jambudvipa, too, on this precious mountain of jewels Four-faced Mahakala your magic makes me hear next day I am happy tell everything to my mother 18 Who_text.indd 18 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �curling time o critter of toe three (of three) in manger-time of hawking old moss creeps to find its mother perhaps a lama, a steeple, to pull me back to earth 19 Who_text.indd 19 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �easy wind blowing mantras on the sick a lonely toe boy (I, a tree, afraid) tourniquet of sound twisting wood (sound) o lamb of heart blowing me before myself 20 Who_text.indd 20 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �if I wander father if I sane the Indian feather pole o Timothy horse crumbs make land easier thy minute of silent horse 21 Who_text.indd 21 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �my nanny goat is home (o white milk thyme) white wood tree (to milk the earth of bees) to toss the sword (in effigy) magician of the cross graze (crack!) the slippery horsey 22 Who_text.indd 22 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �sky is the belly talk he, in the sore, in the stomach of your yield among my ribs my tiger throbs sweet air of milk washing our glands with drink 23 Who_text.indd 23 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �in & out the lambing wanderer feels smelling her way through the belly-high grass the terror that she craves (in my thigh his corpse has settled) feeling it in her wrists and long thin body parts Who_text.indd 24 1/24/08 6:38:59 PM �to green my mare in fresh (cut) in Jataka praying chanting each new moon hurt and cut in the green valley of Tolung I, by the hawk, the loveliest star 25 Who_text.indd 25 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �in white north light the old ghost burns of feathers in their hawks perched on my window ledge bleakly a ring of calm to hold the tree from tossing to the earth o red lion (cow) behold the tree to death 26 Who_text.indd 26 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �tiger tiger from Yarlung Valley head arising from the flower from the bath of ancient wood Tara of the neck help me through this birth draw the word through its beauteous hole 27 Who_text.indd 27 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �raise the lamb in séance Mahakala wet me pointed up and fast in my sac my caul of butter aglow waves alaya in arc of our fathers 28 Who_text.indd 28 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �for in him I stand where birds flock in the afterworld stealing from the cow repairing a hundred rivers my white tent sighs on mountains of snow grass each lice to its sweet home 29 Who_text.indd 29 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �sky to sky o stallion of the peaks Yab Sey Yab Sey of gentle sprinkle (of rain) hrih, hrih, dhih, dhih nor Tara tribes in old (together) Harlem in tribe (in earth) from the moor one seed 30 Who_text.indd 30 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �Tsona Tsona fortress of tall birds I watch mercilessly the dogs that prowl my way scoop the water place it in your blouse tonight come play and be with our lady! 31 Who_text.indd 31 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �come pelican be my faith disappear into my lions the lime tree basks its five-fold leaves white stars swell sweep the sky clean (finally) 32 Who_text.indd 32 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �slut o’ Shol of yellow paint young son o’ sun a hundred tail sweet brown before time the fingers of his voice o hills spare me this green 33 Who_text.indd 33 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �pen me and drink o girl-moon king phoenix of blood lining my green jacket the cuckoo has come from Monyul you say some say— in sweep of thirst its erect tip 34 Who_text.indd 34 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �dedicate the frond o bleak-backed bird sell the gourd holding the whole earth entire flames of wind screech and fall behind wrack me to your eyes, dear don’t leave! 35 Who_text.indd 35 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �earrings lay waste (a statue springs awe) of pedantry of miraculous yellow monkhood dolly dolly don’t die with me forever come to my neck 36 Who_text.indd 36 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �in full king Yeshe of copse of life as a blue-black bird mad (becapped) may I, quoth the igloo choir white-hair child in white-flower tree 37 Who_text.indd 37 1/24/08 6:39:00 PM �wan wan wan o kind fragility a bud, a flare, to death where birds born the strap of birds loving one blue seed spreading (dissolving) 38 Who_text.indd 38 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �I sob at the hat my silk hair flows I am blue my gown, blue cedar having pulled me to your face dear vajra of the southwest sky and yes, this is the esteemed land 39 Who_text.indd 39 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �sweet grass newt may I hold you in my lap mother of butter offering butter your hands smell of cereal of plum of the wild man’s helm 40 Who_text.indd 40 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �butter grows a snow pear falls a white bird hovers in the walnut tree nearby one star shines behind the western peak be merry said the woman climbing from the river 41 Who_text.indd 41 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �wild shoes name my death circle of stone Shambala of spire chipping blood (clipping blood) a Gobi kills to clerics ire we of the collar pray and look downward 42 Who_text.indd 42 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �geshé geshé you hook the word o Usnisavijaya (Shukden of despoil) to gull the sky sweet gull of northwest flowers I am tall I am slow full walker 43 Who_text.indd 43 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �snowland child (winter) boy yearly in the eyes wanting some like Christ a steeple, a cowshed upon hay in morning sun dawn simply up 44 Who_text.indd 44 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �wanting the thread calling the stick black robe me (now that you’ve returned) jetsun of me of night holding tightly I am pleased to be (in daylight) 45 Who_text.indd 45 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �Who, a Licchavi was set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and first issued in digital form by Adobe Systems, Mountain View, California, in 1989. Typesetting & production: Claudia Smelser. Printing & binding: Lightning Source, Inc. Who_text.indd 46 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �Who_text.indd 47 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM �Who_text.indd 48 1/24/08 6:39:01 PM � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Who, a Licchavi Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2007 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780979472121 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_055 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 56 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/3e2725828978f105817c1a3a44edc0b7.pdf 3454107f7060dfc03e8ba8b3e2aaa4a1 PDF Text Text White Bird �also by gail sher PROSE Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 POETRY Mother’s Warm Breath • 2010 The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities • 2009 though actually it is the same earth • 2008 The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1996 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �White Bird Gail Sher Q night crane press 2010 �Copyright 2010, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978-0-9794721-7-6 �For Brendan ��contents First Grandchild 1 The Elements 27 The Fourth Part of Air 45 White Bird 55 ��First Grandchild ��1 The Jambu continent is called the Jambu continent because a fruit of the great Jambupriksha tree fell into a lake, making the sound “jam.” As one thousand buddhas will come and the teachings flourish, this Jambu continent is considered supreme and is called “The Victorious Southern Jambudvipa.” This continent contains twenty-four great lands, ninety-nine small lands, three hundred and sixty different clans, one hundred and eight remote areas and one thousand and two extremely remote places. The Land of Snows is one of them. So hovering in a row, the breath of the row in its high peak of rows. 3 �Squares of light are cool settling night in a row. The hill air is cool, like a tower of air carrying through to nothing. Each night the sun yields its bit of darkness to the child. The darkness squats and plays dark but the child knows that it is dark. The child counts the pieces of dark unsullied by subdued and broken darknesses. 4 �Dark is solid but is also its own lamp. That’s why the sun is dark. Each night the sun gathers its arm. Each night the sun electrifies the sky as if sun is sky’s fathomlessness. Like being awake in your blood before it is your blood in the subtle state of not being at war with sky, you mutter. Clouds of crows carry sky back. Should I, quick, whisper in one’s ear? 5 �Each time one dies, one’s breath, like the moon, hangs from a hook of sky. Like a leaf crosses a twig and he waves the twig. The twig had already been waved though. To sleep in oneself, as if one is alive, but not really, only until something happens. As if the clarity, the full-on bindu, amortizes itself, emptying itself, as if the leaf too, wheeling from sky, drops from the throat of sky. 6 �2 Then her speaking image of a person catches fire. In my dream a man is wearing birds and my speaking image of the birds . . . she clearly sees the long stream of qualities pouring themselves all over his body. A woman eats holding her mouth above her. You are tall, and your mouth, too, is a tall, lean mouth. She longs to be near what she’s sure she remembers knowing, as if an image has an ear and it is your own ear so you want to be near it. Like the sound of her birth in the far-flung distance of birds. 7 �Because the air is there whether you’re awake (or you could be awake beforehand). Whether before, occurring as in the darkness of something. I mean before the crows, but the dakinis have already taken them. If one’s mind clearly holds what is previously, to recall how in the past such things exist anyway. (Like the woman washes her hair in a lake and the lake nearly dies.) It knows me in its eye. If I part from me, the rape is left, but the eye stays inside my belly. 8 �So much water making her a person, like a bone in water is the slain inside her. Instead of her own, she is their hair, the skin of her hair being mother-hair. A portrait of hair tucked in one’s mother, as-if it is her hair not having quite left her mother. A woman locks her hair. It falls inward and she feels the falling inside the hair’s cud. 9 �The her of her hair is not in my fingertips. The her of her mind lacks the valence of my sorrow. Lung and tail, I consist. I am, I say. I am in the boat of me. 10 �3 I am her. I am her. I think it is my mother saying something in a dream. She sleeps in her now, but it is the memory of her, not the person being her. Thus people see a form’s endless slipping, like a tour of herself drifting along her bloodstream. At the foot of air (like a bloodspot in air) or is it the real air. 11 �Is that death, you ask, because the straightest line is death. So much down deep as a spring morning. When she wakes it is still down, so close to her face, further and further. I’m trying to remember that particular mustard-color, like a blood-bath of down, stand-in for all downs. 12 �Birds grow down. Each harp of down, each plucking twining chord of down’s interior pause, so that I am (in the pause). A hummingbird dissolves into its own pure form. One thumb moves as if venturing towards it slowly. Oh! the mother dolly begins, but it is a pretend mother. (However there was a possible mother, I mean a mother exists who could be her mother.) The real mother, whom she’d not yet met, would not have said Oh! 13 �The beauty of sky relates to birds flying out of sky. At dusk the hill withdraws into its form. (Through birds, quiet has a mode.) First grandchild is extreme, I think, as a mode’s emptiness accrues. I am that, I’m thinking. A tree lashes night to quiet, then falls away leaving the quiet naked. 14 �4 Being the person dreaming and now, saying hello to the person who, in the dream thinks, I am also the dream! Dreams implode inward and multiply, like a virus, sort of. The belly of the dream sits in its plate as if the mind of someone were growing from the plate. I am eating for my plate, the mind says. I am my own faller, being in my mind my own kind of falling. Death is in the center. 15 �Being the person dreaming, though dead again. A mind thinks but is dead. A young bird falls as if from the sky but it’s from the water where sky was. You hear the drops of a being, then each piercing droplet of being’s time. I feel her sky in the mass of me today. She smells the inside of me today. 16 �Empty becomes empty-in-the-mass-of-me-today, like a bone gets loose and falls away in the rain. A stream of fish crosses her heart. One drinks her milk and is appeased in its fish-ness, like a baby fish would be coming out of its shell. The baby is frozen. Not many war people come here, she’s thinking. Blue is raw, the ocean like teeth. (Inside the teeth are the color of the teeth.) 17 �If a dream implodes and then its bits of dreams (I’m thinking hounds of sky-hawks flaring their wings, tooting their wings almost.) Even without the wings there can be an experience of wings, but she prefers the sound of her mother’s skirt is to sun like the breast of the sea buried in it. Because the things that we are turn about and become who we are. I am definitely your mother, someone whispers softly, but it is just my voice as if far away. 18 �5 A bird’s song fills the morning. Between song and morning there is space. Like she could draw an ideal of the little bird’s voice. So tenderly green, so now-green. A bird doesn’t speak but its motion is stored in its body. How will I know, she says, watching the bird see its own face. Seeing itself there, nipping at air, the traces of itself still in air, like a grike, say, pushing the bird inside its air. 19 �Seeing the brain of the face. So much medley tearing up the face. Each person must unwrap her face, memorize her face, someone hollers. It’s like a belfry, you comment. A ring of bay and little sips of sky knocking about the water. It’s hard to say if the air falls away, the lure of away, behind the fog (what’s actually taking place). A bowl of green water may be placid tight water, but it’s me being tight, accomplishing green, you whisper. 20 �Air leaks from her bones. The last moment of air is the thinnest air, she’s thinking. I take my thinness seriously, he says, placing his mother in a bowl. (As if an animal blows away and is found on its back in a bowl.) Air gets tired, you say, but if you clutch air, mauling a poor, tired section of air. A dull green bowl holds the water of my air, because the mind of the person is a trilogy of air told through mother-air and father-air. 21 �You in my air on my birthday cake sighing. (Though I did not. I was only sighing for her.) You in the village of people-less thought searching for that connection. The gist of a bird is the animal of its relatives. (She could see its ochre bill and the young tooth of another new child.) A symbol of one’s animal seems to slip down her fingers, crawling over them also (and has its own animal also). 22 �6 Each night the trees slip into sky becoming themselves. Does the grandmother exist? She sees the sky weakening back. Her creamy eyes bulge, slipping back to themselves. She imagines the trees rocking. Trees light passing tips of sound. You watch them disappear, like a man walks back to nothing. 23 �The lips and teeth of wood hang quietly in grandmother’s face. I am wintering in me, she says. She doesn’t want someone speaking out loud. Time is exposed. Grandmother! I gasp, but it’s a heart gasp, like her death. Within the death are letters. If you harm the death, someone begins, because a letter is flesh, beautiful as a peacock. Her breath too might swallow itself. So many rings lapping waves of sorrow on her broken dress-buttons. 24 �See an eating turkey seeing, the pebbles of its eyes weighing down the sky. It’s because grandmother’s skin looks tight. Her eyeballs are too poppy like she sees through time, whereas I don’t. Seeing the ignorance in her skin, its reticulations hanging. The crevice in her mind, its wrinkles hanging. Seeing her shape press itself there, like the mud of a bed of a river. 25 �Her heart, too, imprints into her skin, pressing its shape into the room. I may find sky, she continues, forgetting. To me her mind feels brushed. I am fine, she says, creating a support. I am fine, she repeats, her wooden gaze lasted to her. (Fine is space so her mind is protected.) Grandmother’s body’s space seems heavy. Sometimes she leaks out. I say leak because, later, if she moves, aspects of her do not move. 26 �The Elements �E A RT H A tulip’s knowing is from before knowing, you say mildly. I’m thinking, That’s time. Like when Khyungpo Naljor displayed the five Tantric deities present in his five chakras saying ‘From now on, never see me as ordinary, not even for a moment.’ Time is your own mind, you repeat, and I have a memory of myself disappearing, not in death but somehow being me another way. Like I’m me without a precedent, as if your body is you in the name of a foreign person. A spring of dark lingers in time. It was time before but now the boy draws time. The clear beauty of one whose color is the great color. 28 �To hear the evening sung in night’s dim peace. I am me and then the person who is really me. The traces of her (or bowl of her) like she could be that and grow into someone saying hello to someone. The collapse of yellow altogether unnerves me. Like the sheer end of yellow. Time seems to be more like that, or the feeling of time sticks on you, you add. It’s just whatever you see the world, like a childless person sees, actually, what is being passed over. 29 �One imagines time folding back into the cliff. Death, as a figure, turns into a rock, though its flesh is soft, pinchable like a human’s. Behavior takes place after its occurrence. I move and am aware that I have already done this. One imagines time dripping over the hill. She hides inside, feeling hill into its space, so that all her lifetimes happen together. Only when you are completely through it can the ink of “hill,” the swift calligraphy in its soft Western snowfield, become a roaring geshé-like blessing. 30 �WATE R A junket of fish is in the crook of a man’s mind, so circular in his mind, as if the world, as if his mind and the world become the dawn of fishlessness. Far and near, like the junket is as-if versus the smell inside his head. So many fry wandering around, as-if eternity, the transvestite, is just more precise fish-hood. As-if one transmutes the fish’s consciousness to a Pure Land, which is just an aspect of my consciousness seeming as-if far away. 31 �The man bites off its head, mumbles, then throws the fish toward similar headless fishes. As-if its distance wakes me, like the throes of a cloud pressing space into its shape. The memory has shape and the shape time. Distant and close merge in the fish, which has duration. I mean an imprint of time settles in its skin, as-if its skin had been that. 32 �The fish is ME! (The afflicted mind is an inwardbearing motion.) Nevertheless, as the fish recedes, the ilk, all the ilks share the same essence. My raspy throat converges with the cut throats of that fish pile. Rakshsas wandering through sky enter into people’s throats, she recalls. A residue of fish coats the skin of my throat and sometimes I feel I am not my throat. 33 �I am longevity instead. Because someone prayed. Someone saw the pile of fish’s bodies and prayed for their long lives anyway. Mercy lasts, you say flatly. The fish enter the divine is all. The man who cut their throats knew the precise consequences of his action, therefore his assiduous practice of slicing, tossing, eating, as-if his belly were a globe. His belly WAS a globe, you say. 34 �FIRE An island backs toward night. Thin slabs of shore and soft eyes heaving toward these. Am I dead? (I am nine birds.) A quarry of birds drifts in fragile evening sky. A lion mounts a yak washing back through sky. Sky is a floor and the two animals are flying but they are really on the floor. When lambs are in the sky meowing, each lamb is, a cross passing over the water. 35 �A bird is poised. She rocks her space gently. She offers her tongue to taste what is held off. Because she speaks in such pure stream, her gaze of tongue. Each and every blade of a zinnia is me, she sighs. Swarms of arms lay at her side. It could be death. I am the stomach of my death fallen to the earth. Embers of me are held in sky’s arm, but which, which arm actually slides over the horizon? 36 �A bird or fish toned by where it flies, slips into its landmark. A graceful bird, its lip chewed by its mother. She reaches to its lip, chewing passionately. I try to chew passionately. (That is how she instructs her infant birdlings.) I want to be kind is said by the mother. The mother of my lip, I lay awake wondering if she is happy. 37 �AIR The razed town is part of a wall now, I’m reading, and I know that really the bones and eyes are me only the book doesn’t reveal that. The skin of the town is injured, which I carry. When something touches my skin I feel both the present and the past, the way it feels, taken by itself, without anything added. Animals are there. They recall their skin. Some animals scratch, as if they could scratch the knowing away. I see a being and know that it’s me being that being in someone’s time that’s simply slower than knowing. 38 �I am always dreaming time, you say, as if tenderly knowing the color of your grave-clothes. One forgets that it’s knowing. A thought presses through the ridgelines of one’s hand (the silence inside one’s hand). Like a monk knows something, which could be light or snow or lilies but it doesn’t matter because his teacher sees it also. When I press on light there is a thought inside, just beneath the skin, like subcutaneous knowing. 39 �Sometimes I hear a sound closer than my skin (the distinction between me and the skin). I definitely have never heard this sound, I’m thinking, all the while knowing absolutely that my skin has. If you look at a flower then close your eyes, you definitely know the inside of the flower because your citta has assumed the flower’s pattern. So if you forget the flower you can still have it, like you can crawl inside the flower. If your citta is alive, like a rooster in a field. Each dawn the freefall of wings. 40 �S PAC E Now it is summer and cherries are hard, nubile on-the-tongue. Now (as in India) I climb a shed of sky. A bird eats a worm near a tree, but it is space, their host, the nucleus being the passion of one. Walking westward in sky, where home is a plate of sky. Howsoever I walk, the stride of space is one. 41 �A woman in my dream walks briskly down a hill and I, a cornucopia of space, am overflowing with little horizons of spaciousness. The space that she wanted was the space inside her, that she would see say in a tree, the way a branch gives way to sky. A bed is spread beneath the tree, wider and deeper into the tree. Each night she looks out on the hill and if the lines of sky land quietly on the hill, in integrity with its grass, she feels she is dreaming grass, maybe being inside the grass. 42 �Huckleberry Finn also. Floating down the river he feels inside the river and when he is wholly inside, his breath stops. If you envision light at the point of the trikuti, the small light there that enlarges more and more, as long as you visualize that amplified light, the breath stays stopped. The gross perception of breath leaves me now. Farls of nothing leave me starved. Death is a place and someone goes to death, as if going is the non-going of an echo. 43 ��The Fourth Part of Air �You look at the sky through the tusk of a hill and a cloud disbands of scattered ones. A songbird chirps. The cry of a dog turns to sky. As if a nerve from sky measures her appearance within a context of light settings. A leaf unfurls, then fades into sky. Space is not sky, even though she’s dead. A bone of sky (one, two, three line up as skies), a wheeze of sky as if gotten out of the desert. 46 �A bird touches sky. It seems so sure. Sure displaces sky just at my ear-tip. The space of my dead mother is a content of mind, a shock of rest fallen from sky. Birds click sky toward the perfection sky. In their space are flowers falling. And after rain the full bare sky, deep black, like a sea of shells. 47 �I see a woman in a brace and the brace holds her up, but the brace is just breath. I am definitely what comes out of a trumpet, she’s saying. Its echo is like her whole mouth. Movement inhabits her whole mouth. It slowly slips down, though the girl in the death house, she’s too thin. Her death is too there. Very tangible air (cloth air) arrives in her there, in the fourth part of air, breathing her back to air’s non-air. 48 �A woman sits alone. The lines of her life spread. Her body waits for air to tip. The branching off of age grips a person’s face. A certain opaque color inhabits it like a lake. There is a hat-bearing person. What I hear is the hat swinging from side to side. The flesh of such greens. Like crushed paper in a branch sweeping ground-cover into green. 49 �My mother is a color (she could grow her color), like if a bird constellates in the blue of its color. As if her face were on me, a faint breeze or burr in the side of the dead one. In other rooms, under-rooms, a glimpse of her death in lieu of knowing the deep accord of her own death. The candles of a shade breathe the word without the illusion and the breath of us exchanging ourselves. 50 �So I laugh and compliment a person on her color. What’s that shade? I say and she says marigold, which is SO beautiful. She is wanting to tell the color, but is it the real color? Real could be a color. A woman sees me, an impression that doesn’t erase her image of me. Now I am real, I’m thinking, as if now contains the moment that that can occur. 51 �Am I alive? Maybe I’m just space. I am an interior walking through the door. The time of light may pass, you say. Light may fall outside its space. A lattice of light, a pod of light, gobbling space, or not space, light’s taste. You locate the light in the undergrowth of darker ones, a pale glow as if I am being buried. 52 �Food is light. Teeth are light. Her teeth grind back. Its Use is her presence. Her teeth are like a sling of teeth hitting you in the air. So there are mother teeth and father teeth beginning from the beginningless white and red bindu. Now, in the age of teeth, I mean hers are swollen and I am left with something I cannot piece together. 53 ��White Bird ��1 A man wearing birds, sitting in birds, inside the birds’ flow. Together they’re called White Bird. White Bird grows tall. White Bird hugs his own legs back. The meditation of sky streams into his heart so there’s a passage of heart into which he may relax. White Bird relaxes back into his heart, breathing white, like the beauty of a seed or wind in a bird’s hair. A man sits in wind wearing few clothes, but the birds come and sit on him like clothes. 57 �White Bird stops. Summer light swarms his shell and the blue shell breaks. The beauty of his wing fills with sky. A gull too drags its sky. As if it were an ear gathering in sky. Beauty is sky. Beauty is rain in sky’s past sky. 58 �My mother’s arm is pure, its curve of sky seeping into structures. Then later someone says, That person is a dead person. So then I think, The beauty of sky’s color flows from her arm reminding me of her arm. I want to wear sky, I holler. (I am in tune with degrees of my mother hanging from death like a soft shoe.) Her yellow armpit sags, like old newspapers would be lying fallow as they do on distant fields. 59 �A man buys socks but it is really death lurking in sky. I want to dust sky out so that my limbs swallow themselves. He looks, passing by death, as if he is new, in sky now, as he puts it. O look at the birds! They’re combing each other’s hair! (He’s watching a bird gather its gorgeousness.) My mother is a line. Within the death-lines she is one. But a node on her blackens and then she is not my mother. 60 �I know a bird whose color is sky before the sky admits itself. Like the brain of a color if sky admits the bird. A mountain is visible inside the bird then. Its color dies then. A queen bird releases into sky. There’s the sky! someone says, as if there is sky, the location sky. That bird knows me well, I’m thinking, because the bird is mostly dead. 61 �Here is a corner of sky, mother says, fondling a dead bird wrapped up in her pocket. (The bird had lost sky. That’s why it died.) I am the oscillations of a flower, inside, like a flower’s brevity, she whispers. A tall bird tumbles through sky. The touch of its voice is like a raw egg folded into zero. My mother feeds me air, the tablature of air, doubling air, forcing it to become air to something. 62 �I dream of air (a box of air) because I conflate air with my dead mother. She could taste the flavor of the box and in her mind suck out the box. (Secretly she criticized people who didn’t suck.) Her feet swell in air. The ascending foot, like you could crawl inside the foot. Who is the end of my mother? Who is the end of my death? (I am organizing myself backwards.) Flowers fall, but mountains blossom in air. Born in air, I’m in air already, like a broken piece of air. 63 �2 Sometimes a tree lies flat against sky and its outline in sky makes a sound. The sound has a color that is not something I know. The sound of a flower goes anywhere, you say. The water of its breast dribbles down the grass, which is old grass, with old sound, barely any. So then I think, My mother is dead but when I sleep with her, I’m old. 64 �A woman stands alone. She swings her eyes out past nothing. If you look at a squirrel and see it very clearly, its feeling pulls back, pulls its loyalty back. Squirrels are always alone. May the squirrel never be alone, she continues, as if time were a bottle of water. As if a young calf molts or a snake coils around a flower and then is the flower. 65 �Is it true or false, a child demands, hearing that petunia-lands exist. For sound doesn’t die, though its lineage may, like Buddha Shakyamuni’s dharma. Sharsin, Muni Sharsin, they say. Muni Sharsin means Buddha Shakyamuni’s dharma, which the Buddha said, without the lineage will die. Thus the longevity of a sound’s hand dissolves into its legacy of repertoire. Which is not acquisitive, does not form a habit of being. It’s the loin of the habit of the sound. 66 �3 Can sand laugh? You see sand and then sand’s throat. I mean the lax throat of her death-rattle. Is it a whole throat? Be aware of the whole throat. Take the climate of her throat. Like she could set it on the sill and it would still be her throat. Because things exist, and then exist, and their detritus is left in the mouth of the person. 67 �I see a photograph of her throat, which is not the actual throat. Where is her throat in the wake of that? (I’m guessing that means after her throat.) Does it learn? you ask. (I’m trying to remember if her throat learned during its lifetime as my mother.) Someone is the location of what once was my mother. (There are pigs, dogs and someone is riding the dog.) It’s the still core of an eye, thus my mother almost. She begins in her heart, like a step ladder of hearts all within one heart. 68 �A little dog trapes across the edges of a carcass, its spots blowing toward birth. The weight of its space creeps under space. (This is called ‘opening the space gate.’) Her parakeet that died can release itself in space. (She pictures her mother in an agony of space, beyond what she can imagine as being, as if her mother is, somehow, without being.) Take a maximum bird. One feather fills the canyon and its children eat plentifully. BECAUSE FROM TODAY SHE IS NOT DEAD. 69 �White Bird is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Prix Charles Peignot for Excellence in Type Design from the Association Typographique Internationale. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource White bird Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2010 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780979472176 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_054 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 80 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/20a3f923e7400c509544c892d16cb125.pdf 0c2be013c76f433e414f48b8a4c617d9 PDF Text Text Watching Slow Flowers WatchingSlow_text.indd 1 8/28/08 5:14:16 PM �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 WatchingSlow_text.indd 2 8/28/08 5:14:16 PM �Watching Slow Flowers Gail Sher Q night crane press 2006 WatchingSlow_text.indd 3 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �Copyright 2006, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. isbn: 978–0–9726115–7–2 WatchingSlow_text.indd 4 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �For Brendan WatchingSlow_text.indd 5 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �WatchingSlow_text.indd 6 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �watching slow flowers WatchingSlow_text.indd 1 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �WatchingSlow_text.indd 2 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �1 My pointy feet, my sweaty fists, my quirky nose, higher than a mountain. Regarding the precepts, I behave like some kind of trained animal. Now, even though I wear Shakyamuni’s robe, everyone laughs and calls me old rice bag. So be it! Grass-being and form-being both reside in the jeweled palace. � WatchingSlow_text.indd 3 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �2 “Were his crows faithful?” I ask this, hearing one caw. Its voice is young, high-pitched, naïve. Leaning on my oar, coracle adrift, I doze as villagers chew rice. One thin crane slurps a bit of water. � WatchingSlow_text.indd 4 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �3 The smell of dawn pulls me toward its shadow. Yesterday’s flower, missing two petals I see. A flower falls from the wheel of life, Mahakala, from the ocean of purity. Yet the blue-black sky, electric (shocking), roars at the cliff ’s edge. � WatchingSlow_text.indd 5 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �4 Rain carves a path where cicadas have yet to keen. Lunar light seeps through stone. The creek is packed with birds. They’re lined along the bank. Even now the branches and peaks of Phula Hari tilt toward the north. � WatchingSlow_text.indd 6 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �5 On serried steppes, trees arch awkwardly. Too many springs of salt-sea wind. Or so people say. I myself, a crotchety old man, find comfort in their crookedness. In melon dawn they flower. Their sweetness freshens the altar. � WatchingSlow_text.indd 7 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �6 One lily by my gate, through the frost, upright. From my door, limpid valley sounds. Pine tree paths, washed out by rain, riddled with mud and decay, make me mindful as I gingerly, step by step (do I?) avoid its worms. � WatchingSlow_text.indd 8 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �7 I stand on a knoll, the sky just now cyan-colored. “Was it lethargy in a previous life . . . “but my thoughts peter out. New springs, softly softly, are you sprouting in the willows? One scraggly branch carves in my mind a very deep impression. � WatchingSlow_text.indd 9 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �8 Wild geese in wild grass swarm the day’s near end. Waddling, chewing, flocking, long green necks of light. Fish nibble shadows. A few grouse rustle brush. At dusk, they simply enter the earth naturally. 10 WatchingSlow_text.indd 10 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �9 A common day. My hill supine and blue At a pheasant’s cry, old memories arise. Plum trees drop fruit. Sweet juice down my chin as I kneel, gazing at the nubile dirt. Their plot of earth, like a waiting boat. 11 WatchingSlow_text.indd 11 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �10 Sparrows under fen, flit flit. Dark dawn becomes a sound. A circle moon, a solitary star, linger still from last night’s sky. In their mouths, deer carry flowers. 12 WatchingSlow_text.indd 12 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �11 Layers of dawn peel from the hill. White clouds return, illuminating herbs that flourish year after year. Pine winds no longer stir the mud, sodden, creviced, bare. Yet they break the current’s route, slowing the fishes. 13 WatchingSlow_text.indd 13 8/28/08 5:14:17 PM �12 “Is that rain?” The daisies look cold. Sun (dawn’s peak) crawls across the hill. Flaccid petals greet the sky (though the day is not pretty). “They’re babies!” I exclaim, suddenly surprised that flowers have babies. 14 WatchingSlow_text.indd 14 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �13 Fine spring rains! I try moving my candle. From a stand of elm, wild turkeys (like wind-tossed leaves). Hoping to draw fresh water, I climb the blue-green slopes. Tides rise, level with the bank, as sun and fishing boats gather. 15 WatchingSlow_text.indd 15 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �14 Clear light. The daisy hill awake. “Hello hill.” (I’m thinking it’s my lama.) Sparrows chortle. Crows caw. A warbler sings through fragrant fir. I close my eyes. Their piercing notes glide in. 16 WatchingSlow_text.indd 16 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �15 Today is glorious! The sky clear. Tara land. (Cupped land.) Weeds rear their cocky necks. At the southern porch, with sunlight on my back, like some crazy flower I nod. “May the thunder of the tantras shake earth and sky and trees,” I mumble (a bit delirious). 17 WatchingSlow_text.indd 17 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �16 By the water’s mouth I wander. Shadows sink in far-off mist, spread their ocean net. A thin drizzle appears, disappears. As it passes it turns gray. My eye falls on an orchid, blowing in a breeze along the swaggering bank. 18 WatchingSlow_text.indd 18 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �17 I walk to a place where flowers are effulgent. “When the Buddha tosses his toothbrush to the earth, it instantly becomes a wish-fulfilling tree,” I read. To the west graze numerous gentle animals. A tip of rye sings to itself. 19 WatchingSlow_text.indd 19 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �18 At dusk I climb the greening steppes, the road in settling mist. Crossing a bridge, its webs a whirl of drift. Birds birds birds, their hour of grass (of wallowing). Truculent (dancey) in a hollow by the river. 20 WatchingSlow_text.indd 20 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �19 Gently honking, the wandering geese. Beaks to grass, a pack of them at day’s end. The lapels of my robe flutter as I, slowly, reluctantly, turn home. When spring winds wake, the dead tree roars. 21 WatchingSlow_text.indd 21 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �20 To all my mothers and all my fathers whose treehouse rooms will last unto antiquity. The tales of your deeds place a person on the Path. In beds of bog, ganders scavenge for grubs. Above, ’neath a strange moon, flaming clouds spasm. 22 WatchingSlow_text.indd 22 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �21 Windblown rain darkens dusk. Tills its edges, smudged by dew left behind to melt. Green mountain, warbling finch, mind too clarified for sleep. “I’ll wait for dawn,” I think as I kneel, scrubbing my feet on the stream’s icy rocks. 23 WatchingSlow_text.indd 23 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �22 With the long rains I stay home. My window-shade flaps softly. I put on my clogs, go out to check the radishes. “Hey Molly!” a woman shouts (somehow damaging the auspicious circumstance). 24 WatchingSlow_text.indd 24 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �23 “Handsome day!” The lady wears socks. She pauses, pulls something from her cart, then continues pushing. “I know her,” I think. I struggle in my mind to place her coltish gestures. “Can I buy that doll?” (Her child points to a gorilla.) Its eyes are soft. 25 WatchingSlow_text.indd 25 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �24 It’s spring! Wildflowers purple, violet, blue. Through the canyon’s clouds, a flock of blackbirds wash. Though listening, I look away. My lama is near and I am aroused. Bracelets and rings wrap his forearms and fingers. 26 WatchingSlow_text.indd 26 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �25 Sweet One, are you calling? Frogs sound from deep within the fall. Alone I walk the creek, watch clusters of clouds gather. Pillows for the wings of birds? 27 WatchingSlow_text.indd 27 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �26 Sea-blue like a witch stirs the bubbling cauldron. Imprints from my feet, swept clean by the tide, starfish, shells, sea-grapes, crabs, cover of the hardpacked sand. Wandering here and there, I gaily pass the time. Wild animals amble, utterly at ease, singing, dancing, carousing, while I sleep in the tufted grass. 28 WatchingSlow_text.indd 28 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �27 “The gist of blue. Is that the Pure Land of Ogmin?” Black of night, pink of day—blue makes them possible. I WANT blue (crave it) imbibe it with water, though I’m not really thirsty. Drinking blue I become myself. 29 WatchingSlow_text.indd 29 8/28/08 5:14:18 PM �28 Dark sun shortly to be replaced by moon. “Later I’ll rest in a meadow full of flowers,” I think. This old body, once immune to wind and cold, looks forward to the comforts of day’s end. “Have you come from Tashi Lhunpo to take me home?” I ask a group of monkeys. 30 WatchingSlow_text.indd 30 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �29 My hoya’s limbs like an arrow pierce the dark. Straight to the sky—the hawk ne’er makes a steadier path. A windbell chimes, ting-ting, ting-ting, casting emptiness to the hills. My mind snaps it up. 31 WatchingSlow_text.indd 31 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �30 Clouds gather. The Dharma Hall is wet. One sprig flutters despite a lack of breeze. In the mountain’s dawning mist, I flip impatiently through a text. Every day it’s the same. 32 WatchingSlow_text.indd 32 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �31 Moss darkens as it rains. Trees drip on slippery, turquoise rocks. Naked in the stream, I wade out past the reeds. Later I walk the hill. A circle of mares rests calmly in the grass while a strong brown beauty swathes their flanks with cool, clear water. 33 WatchingSlow_text.indd 33 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �32 The gate shuts. Click! Hallowed aloneness, sanctioned by dazzling stars. I sit by my window, loath to move . . . to breathe even . . . lest the pleasure distill. Tonight I will not read. 34 WatchingSlow_text.indd 34 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �33 “Look! The sun! It hits a white camellia.” Cook-smoke glazes early morning light. A gentle breeze stirs. A ferry departs. Strange birds call as I walk north. 35 WatchingSlow_text.indd 35 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �34 In and out, the scalloped pools, a light breeze leaves scattered petals. Their pink, rose, yellow, brighten the mountain wood. “Look at the sky!” someone says pointing to its eastern corridor. “I am a tuna. Devolved from the three fields. Now, near death, my dry fins flail.” (My thoughts become nonsensical.) 36 WatchingSlow_text.indd 36 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �35 Sitting on a hill I watch the embers fade. (Stumps that remain, mere charcoal silhouettes.) A creek gurgles loudly. As it carries off ash, I find its chatter soothing. A crow flits about before drifting through debris. Its reddish tail disappears leaving the landscape unchanged. 37 WatchingSlow_text.indd 37 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �36 Vast time descends across the ridge. Vast wind, the plateau covered with cinder. Tiny birds drift in and out. Their drab feathers fade in the chilly air. Neither swishing willows nor sparkling streams dash through fields of mustard and peas, as they did in Tibet . . . or do. 38 WatchingSlow_text.indd 38 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �37 Sing owl. With your hum sounds the Pure Lands. Sleep animals. The fat of the summer will hold you. I sit in cool shade. Admire their delicate fur. “Please take care of yourself,” I think. 39 WatchingSlow_text.indd 39 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �38 Ten thousand gullies, invisible. A dark moon rises in seasonal white dew. Thunder, then wind, though the latter comforts with its fresh, eucalyptus fragrance. By a bog, swamped in ominous murmurings, I pass the smolderings of a farmer’s fire. 40 WatchingSlow_text.indd 40 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �39 Home again, I wash my legs and hands. Chortling sparrows swarm the silver bush. Dusk creeps in. “Tomorrow I’ll mend my sandals,” I think, noticing my cloak streaked with mountain shadows. That a full view of sun is blocked by the hill makes its radiance even more marvelous. 41 WatchingSlow_text.indd 41 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �40 Cutting my toenails by a sunny window—“Magic sun,” I think, “are you paying attention?” (My tomato vine dangles over parched scratched mud.) Like a passion-flower it blooms, providing lionthrones for kings. A swastika, some kusha grass, diamond and moon, for my dorje cushion. 42 WatchingSlow_text.indd 42 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �41 Weeds clog the gate. Ground fills with trailing gourds. “I hate gourds,” their owner used to say, so villagers came to gather them. A girl from the bridge (her gaze is intent). Gritty sunglasses sag. One dove coos. Coo coo coo. Its imago in the deafening moon. 43 WatchingSlow_text.indd 43 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �42 West of the bridge, east of the willows, heat, flies, what compels me to return? Late-summer night, its fathomless pink. “China is hot. You are old. In your own country the water agrees with you,” I muse. Teacher, protector, kind dharma lord, may your radiant qualities instill in me this lineage of the wordless. 44 WatchingSlow_text.indd 44 8/28/08 5:14:19 PM �43 A Brahmin girl, offering her needle to a bhikshu, transmutes into the noble Shariputra. A woman, giving a meal to a beggar, rebirths in a mansion enjoying delicious food. A pig who makes one circumambulation of a stupa (being chased by a dog) takes the form of household Palkye (who eventually attains the level of an arhat). Thus it is said, even small virtuous actions bring great merit. 45 WatchingSlow_text.indd 45 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �44 Summer wanes. (Lightning-bugs, lightning-bugs.) Birds drift off and don’t return. Some may wonder that one so crooked and smelly is still alive. Yet within one’s skin are the Path and the fruits of the Path. 46 WatchingSlow_text.indd 46 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �45 Tonight a mountain moon. Mindful voices of cicadas. Trees drip dew from soft afternoon rain. I sit by a grate listening to the chattering brook. Its banks are about to fold, which is of concern. 47 WatchingSlow_text.indd 47 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �46 From beyond the tall willow, a firefly. Otherwise, only clouds move. I lie on the grass. “I’ll just watch for a while,” I think, as heat melts into quiet. “I am the wind. I stroke my little pets.” 48 WatchingSlow_text.indd 48 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �47 A fragile being, tufted (hairy) in its confusion has brushed me, but sleep prevails and I forget. “Has he killed me before?” my stuporous mind mutters. Selfish night. You take what you want. You howl. (You’re rude.) Shatter everything in your path. This clock-bound life makes me sensitive. 49 WatchingSlow_text.indd 49 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �48 Bullfrogs croak. Their throaty bass closes in. Leaves lift their palms in despair. Heat floods the berm kindled by inner glow. Smoothing my pillow, I sleep fitfully. 50 WatchingSlow_text.indd 50 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �49 Clambering along the quiet canyon creek, morning ripe, choked with charcoal mist. Deer slumber. Birds stay put, though I sense their impatience. This old man moves slowly, the path clogged with scree, unwieldy beneath a waning moon. 51 WatchingSlow_text.indd 51 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �50 Here in the mountain where sky is vast, morose clouds merge, rain about to burst. At the storm’s first sound, my body gets drenched in dew. Just then a needle falls. Crashes to the earth. “Li Po floatingly rode off on a crane,” I think, reminded of this suddenly. 52 WatchingSlow_text.indd 52 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �51 That starving doe who roams the vale . . . On a distant peak, the mauve of daybreak clear. An old man pauses, then resumes slowly walking. “Tonight I will light a fire with the last summer wood,” I murmur. 53 WatchingSlow_text.indd 53 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �52 “Wherefore in me is Chokhor Gyal’s mystery?” Vet of time, drop by drop. “I’ll rest here,” I think, spotting an old monk’s bench! From a bramble an oriole flutters. 54 WatchingSlow_text.indd 54 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �53 Wind blows the wild grass low. “Mexican Hat” daisies—is that what the mendicant said? They are young (like a child) with thick, prominent necks. A flock of geese quickly turn to night, leaving no tracks. 55 WatchingSlow_text.indd 55 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �54 I gaze at the water. Its rising peaks turn pink. Snow-leopards sprawl some rocky mule-shaped clouds. That monk—he’d stitched a fine swatch of silk to his tattered robe (someone had offered it to him) though the manager of a nearby monastery hated to see such good brocade go to waste—for some reason sticks in my mind. Though not yet ready to leave off musing, dusk falls, and I mount my old horse. 56 WatchingSlow_text.indd 56 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �55 You wash before “sitting” in the empty bird’s-nest temple. I think to join you, but wait instead by the eastern gate. Robins chime (make a gnomic peace). A reddish tail disappears leaving the landscape unchanged. 57 WatchingSlow_text.indd 57 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �56 The roar of the woods, which I hear from below. Old old old, its silence untouched. Where are the ducks? (Nectar filters through their webs.) Well, the sand still holds the storm. 58 WatchingSlow_text.indd 58 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �57 The path, full of weeds, near the fence, a bloated squash. From over the river, the sound of logging dulls. Fringed water (its edges bird-filled). Fish scuttle under. As the setting sun drops behind the western cliff, I stop, rest a while, wash my feet. 59 WatchingSlow_text.indd 59 8/28/08 5:14:20 PM �58 Sparrows seem used, uninvented. Scaly mud, dull sky, colorless birds, remind me of my mind. To see the autumn leaves scatter in my home. (The longing they arouse as they lie on the wood turning red.) Is it of my body that they partake? 60 WatchingSlow_text.indd 60 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �59 Windblown scruff down empty cloisters. Pinecones fall (tumble the decayed halls). Lesser snow in the hollow air drifts to the spot where the jade woman washes silk. Then it spreads (the circumference of activity). 61 WatchingSlow_text.indd 61 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �60 Pines, eclipses by peaks, a sundry of color. The lake’s autumn water melds into the woods. Limned with ice, its scum of leaves. A hundred palms slurp them up. 62 WatchingSlow_text.indd 62 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �61 Tonight the rain purrs then dribbles against my rooftop. The sounds of animals out on-the-prowl. (Nits in the ravaged hill.) Illumined by moon, shadowed by cloud, I stay secluded in a mountain recess. Occasionally my lamp flickers. In this pleasant way I pass the evening quietly. 63 WatchingSlow_text.indd 63 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �62 In this ancient gully, I await the crane’s return. On a rock I scrub my robe, river water soundless. A sparrow pecks at withered leaves. On the clean hill, mountain fruits. Should I rest? Just now I prefer to admire the pink chrysanthemums that border the east wood’s edge. 64 WatchingSlow_text.indd 64 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �63 Erratic petals tip eastward. “The hill will catch them. Or a nearby stump, lichen-choked,” I mutter. A dog pees, then shakes itself vigorously. With the days short and the weather cold, the ground fills with crusty water. 65 WatchingSlow_text.indd 65 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �64 Behold the snowy fields I pass, the orchids, the wild (gorgeous) beasts! See the swards of sweetly smelling grass. Rivers gurgle, freshets cheep, fish sail the air. The skirts of my robe I spread carefully as I lay back, swathed in eerie winter warmth. 66 WatchingSlow_text.indd 66 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �65 I eat air, chew the motes hard. I swallow stars as they fall through snapping wind. I sing to myself the ditties I learned as a child. Thus the autumn days vanish. 67 WatchingSlow_text.indd 67 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �66 Sun sinks, covering the cold embankment. Pebbles roll about (whose sound I find friendly). I bow a stalk. Its backlash pings (student of the mountain’s flow). “Look!” someone exclaims. Is he gathering herbs? (He puts something in an apron pocket.) 68 WatchingSlow_text.indd 68 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �67 Smoky-black, bog roils in whorls of spit. I stand here gazing, winter trees shrill. A band of ducks with neon coats nestle in the longstemmed grass. A bullfrog moans (or maybe it’s my lama murmuring sweet nothings)? 69 WatchingSlow_text.indd 69 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �68 Puddles, and on the pathway ponds, so that spray is everywhere. Crickets purr, slender moon low. Whoosh! Water. (More water.) Stubbles from nine waves. A hall of clouds over soaked dark earth. 70 WatchingSlow_text.indd 70 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �69 A wolf ’s defeated stride contains its prey’s proximity. Just as pears seem green but the blue of the sea settles in the earth and appears in its fruit (if you look closely). With oncoming winter, foliage decays. Yellow breeze covers its roots. “When Kunga Palmo died, her skull (pure pearl) bore a clear impression of the deity Heruka Chakrasamvara,” I randomly recall. 71 WatchingSlow_text.indd 71 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �70 Alone with the light, incipient, silent. I laugh with the river riffling stones of green. “Soon it will be too cold to simply gaze at the empty earth.” (I calculate.) It’s hard to detect by my old skin and hair, that I am unshaken. 72 WatchingSlow_text.indd 72 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �71 Duck or gull—I can hardly tell—ring between the crests. In the heart of the night, one small boat, softly framed by moon. Tossed not by waves nor swayed by breeze, yet rising, falling, drifting, the throb of a horn, long, low, subtle, blows from the north with the wind. 73 WatchingSlow_text.indd 73 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �72 Snow of the South Peak. Stolid trees, white. From my window, glistening sun stuns. “Buddha stamps his right foot, causes the six worlds to shake.” (This from my liturgy.) Can it be doubted? Padmasambhava was slain how many times only to turn up smiling on a lotus? 74 WatchingSlow_text.indd 74 8/28/08 5:14:21 PM �73 The red sun wakens me. (I am weightless. Light as a bird!) Dogs, goats, dri, regale their noise morning routine. A man grunts. (He has nothing to say.) A traveler, in the distance, forges ahead slowly. 75 WatchingSlow_text.indd 75 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �74 Snow falls logically. Crystals from the sun fluff it full of pink. Silence (by layers) saturates its porous skin. “Your shags are limp.” I point a wagging finger. Because I imbibe ambrosia from the Land of Snow, when I touch my tongue to a bit of roasted flour, a tablespoon suffices an entire season. 76 WatchingSlow_text.indd 76 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �75 Exuberant snow, you fall dexterously. For falling you know. It’s your Way. Fall, rest, die—your legacy, my heritage. But by your beauty . . . I get distracted. 77 WatchingSlow_text.indd 77 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �76 From this white world, one bush (one branch). Thorns pierce the downy drops that plummet, land, bleed. Poor drop. I watch you dribble down a stem. Seeing this, I chant some manis. 78 WatchingSlow_text.indd 78 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �77 White diamonds melt. Become white diamonds. Tilling earth (the “plow of winter” they say). Soft space, soft air, filled by soft white worms. Blood trickles in. Squiggles of raw-red prick the stark terrain. 79 WatchingSlow_text.indd 79 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �78 Sitting by the fire, I stitch, but my mind is full of snow. Unmelted snow, rock hard. “December! It’s the Tenth!” Biting cold at another year’s end. A blossom last night ripe, as from a crane’s bill, quietly dwindles. 80 WatchingSlow_text.indd 80 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �79 Winter deepens with urgent birdcalls. A few later Monarchs recklessly flap south. The sound of snow brushed by wind grows stronger with arousing night. As I walk the mountain road, one shrill moan in a sudden gust. 81 WatchingSlow_text.indd 81 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �80 Branches drop their clothing. They WANT bareness. Nakedness is relief. The ghost of the year is held in the trees. Do no try to ply them with unwanted gifts. 82 WatchingSlow_text.indd 82 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �81 Hair and eyebrows white, I climb the wild slopes. Clutching brambles, hoisting myself over rocks, may I excoriate this residue of heedlessness. Myriad mothers have cared for me through the years. All have been kind to the extent of their ability. Therefore it is said, when the mind contracts, like an old scroll rolling itself up, one must examine it thoroughly. 83 WatchingSlow_text.indd 83 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �82 Inside the pass, the freeze (arriving early) halfwithers the mountain’s foliage. Snow piles up, smothering pilgrim’s stones. I trudge slowly. Holes from my staff, quickly filled by drift. For His sake. For His sake. (With this mind, guided by my lantern’s shadow.) 84 WatchingSlow_text.indd 84 8/28/08 5:14:22 PM �83 A full moon floats through leafless trees. Softly it rises like steam from my rice pot. “If you take that portrait to be me, your mind will never be united with the wall,” suggests an ancestor. From out the drift, one red flower. 85 WatchingSlow_text.indd 85 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �84 For we are, one and all, continuously watched. Lovingly cradled in the arms of heavenly beings. Whose presence brings brown to fruition. We plod through snow in our thin soles. 86 WatchingSlow_text.indd 86 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �85 “Another winter,” I think as snow besieges my door. Rising sun finds me still asleep. It’s not cold, oddly, though the lake is frozen and the headwind stiff. In each heathered fen, it gathers more debris. 87 WatchingSlow_text.indd 87 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �86 Sewing by the stove in the early morning light. Snow falls in craggy piles. As deep clouds clear, a man appears. The sound of a rake on the doughy earth. 88 WatchingSlow_text.indd 88 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �87 Today the sky is yellow. I want to go out but do not, passing the morning in indecision. Rice and curd—“food of a hundred tastes!” Buddha bowl heaped, I couldn’t be more pleased. 89 WatchingSlow_text.indd 89 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �88 The smell of snow (a long, deep breath). I scale the cliff. The clear cold sets a trance. Children roll you into balls, toss you, clothe you, feed you. “It’s dry,” a woman says, rolling a carpet into place. 90 WatchingSlow_text.indd 90 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �89 An old pine sighs, though there is no wind. Its green needles spar softly-falling flakes. A lingering moon lights the truculent road north. Dusk is thick with scribbled paints, which, pathetic me, mimics. 91 WatchingSlow_text.indd 91 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �90 Keutsang Hermitage is on a rocky incline. Its grate is cold. Its branches claw. Though nests line its top, vultures never descend. Thus, after several occasions of vulture descending. I make sacrificial banishment offerings. 92 WatchingSlow_text.indd 92 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �91 This old body, inside a mirror, I watch it cast about the room, feebly. Shabby skin a bag. Like the fire pit, cold. My breath, in the chill, swallows up five colors. My lama gives me entry. To Him I deeply bow. His name alone shatters me. 93 WatchingSlow_text.indd 93 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �92 Insentient beings hear insentient beings. Yet “walls and fences cannot instruct the grasses and trees to actualize springs,” a great-one said. Still, the bell, its tintinnabulation, the ringing of the ringing, gently inspired by wind, clearly articulates emptiness. 94 WatchingSlow_text.indd 94 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �93 Beneath tonight’s full moon I swallow up Xi River. For me the clouds serve better than an old mare. Relaxing by my fire, I keep company with Manjushri. Thanks to the fullness of Ju-ching’s mind, his “Look!” as he raised his hossu. 95 WatchingSlow_text.indd 95 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �94 Day breaks. The Big Dipper slips east. In its bowl my gaze rests comfortably. Like a tender blade my thin body wanders. Is there anyone who would not be moved? 96 WatchingSlow_text.indd 96 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �95 With inky dawn the still bird stirs. A gust of wind, it fluffs its wings. Still sitting, from side to side its head. Eyes close and again . . . motionless. 97 WatchingSlow_text.indd 97 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �96 On the hill’s grass edge, an icy creek. Dragon limbs dangle perilously. To establish the practice in me—that it move forward without obstacles. Thus I hear the cypress on the quiet shore whispering together. 98 WatchingSlow_text.indd 98 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �97 Death at the bottom. (That’s snow’s secret.) It exists, does not, falls, does not. In its short life, my life abides, full of fervor and verve. For once I have an edge. 99 WatchingSlow_text.indd 99 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �98 Red faced demon, you swallowed my son. Posed under earth with your open, ravenous mouth. Don’t tell me to relax. While still alive, to plunge into the Yellow Springs. What appears in front of a ghost cave is not an ordinary fox. 100 WatchingSlow_text.indd 100 8/28/08 5:14:23 PM �99 Mist-soaked fields congeal the mountain’s green. In the second month, only plum blossoms open their faces. Light snow falls. Glazes the earth in silk. A grizzled hawk shaves the narrow river. 101 WatchingSlow_text.indd 101 8/28/08 5:14:24 PM �100 At first light, rain. You can hear the wet. Lifeless ashes stir, but my fire refuses to spark. I listen to the sea (wind and waves ceaseless). In darkness my rocker creeks. 102 WatchingSlow_text.indd 102 8/28/08 5:14:24 PM �WatchingSlow_text.indd 103 8/28/08 5:14:24 PM �WatchingSlow_text.indd 104 8/28/08 5:14:24 PM �Watching Slow Flowers was set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and first issued in digital form by Adobe Systems, Mountain View, California, in 1989. Typesetting & production: Claudia Smelser. Printing & binding: Lightning Source, Inc. WatchingSlow_text.indd 105 8/28/08 5:14:24 PM �WatchingSlow_text.indd 106 8/28/08 5:14:24 PM � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Watching slow flowers Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2006 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780972611572 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_053 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 112 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/ba0e852b0efa448df982f134044d11dc.pdf 6a40254d7640e8520ce0680213a1a2bf PDF Text Text The Twelve Nidānas �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 poetry Figures in Blue • 2012 The Bardo Books • 2011 White Bird • 2010 Mother’s Warm Breath • 2010 The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities • 2009 though actually it is the same earth • 2008 The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1996 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �The Twelve Nidānas Gail Sher night crane press 2012 �Copyright 2012, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978-0-9858843-1-4 �For Brendan �note Nidāna (Pali/Sanskrit): “cause, foundation, source, origin.” The twelve nidānas are an application of the Buddhist concept of dependent origination. They identify the origin of suffering to be ignorance. �I A man’s hand in the midst of him, a simple expression of earth, the junction of red earth in lieu of something indeterminable in the person. The anthem of his hand, the flesh of his dark hand, as in the blood of someone you know. The attention of a leaf presses itself outwards. How many lights pierce through the clouds achieving themselves in its bit of space. A tattoo of leaves touches his head lightly, like an angel’s hand anointing his crown, passing on the light of him. 1 �A man may be carrying the images of an angel’s body, the division of light being the tilt of an angel’s body. He is wanting the complete light, the sense of arising trapped in the angel’s body. A concentration toward okay between what is presented to one, some subtlety coming to one. Like an absence that one carries, light vanishes light, innocuous space beyond what one recalls. 2 �The shadows of two people make a darkness in a field indistinguishable from the two people. As how a silhouette of space, imaging the angel’s dark form, as if his hand in pledge behind the eyesocket were internalized. His image of him, whether his angel is dark, a dark dark angel as a transparency on his desire. A filigree of space tips alluringly upwards as if it were imaging his own guts and belly. 3 �Maybe he were a queen then. Maybe so many queens in a reality that is fed queens. The city is an outbreath, a dark fabric of sky, as if sky were the angel’s eyes. A cat gets up, walks slowly over to sky, intuiting a sky that simply dissolves into a cat’s body. In the congregate of moving, dawn dissolves to sky, what holds between his feeling and a cityscape of sky. 4 �II The sky bleeds dark and lucent from its writing. A calf is clearly struggling. The absorption of a star, a linguistic signal, allows the sky to dangle there. Elements are like memory and function as a support. Earth is easy, though it moves to the ground and vanishes. Her mind pours light on a stalk-still bird and it stays still, then moves to the ground and vanishes. 5 �Something in the calf holds hostage as a fight, like war in its family that has descended in its body. She sees calf, the procession of a body. It is a baby engrossed in a footprint so its head is down. Leaving one guessing. Is this real? Is this a fact? Repetition is and is part of the calf. (I am feeling its feeling deep in my armpit.) Repetitive, not an irreducible spacing, is easily closed off, like dreaming or forgetting that in fact you are a calf. 6 �If she promises to be her eyes, the extension into space, not the calf but the contiguous motion of its body. Because the partial mind of seeing (the invisibleinclusive eye) binds what’s unavailable to what you see. Touch without touch, action without action. a feather-light eye touches the world back, like her death or above zero (if she were a lamb climbing out of her eyes). I seal space, closing my eyes lightly, touching things lightly, because my eyes touch and are touched and this has become onerous. 7 �What if seeing and touching were not simultaneous, that having seen, the product of your seeing does not come back to you? If time boycotts time and falls to clear seeing, its ersatz life exposed? Pairs of eyes peer through the dark, not seeing something but just the consciousness, knowing knowing seeing. Like you could skip seeing and just be seeing because the past of an eye comes from everywhere. 8 �III I walk through trees, a series of squat willows, and see the space between the willows as time. Because it’s not the space, it’s the emptiness of mind (whose energy is grounded to its darkest possible color). Taking birth beneath a tree, I want to feel my longing for the tree, my deep thought of you in its disentangled precision of stillness. One bends, taking its time, a full earth of time. How do I wander into its leaf? 9 �Merely touching earth, gently touching the awareness of earth, like the beginning of day in earth. Leaves stretch to sun, the full breath of sun, but I am left gasping. My reference point is fading. The underleaf is blank. But blank itself catches me in a kind of double-take. A gap exists but she refuses to see it, which is a third sort of fuging, like the darkly yellow on the leaf ’s bottom. 10 �That yellow cala lily, earth and earth-consecutivewith-darkness, a coincidence of blood and dark and color, such a yellow, heavy and unknown. Indexed to light, this card of light folds around the sleeve of your body. We take shelter in abyss, which looks like a color, magenta calligraphed in a cala lily’s cup, deep in the cup, its fire. Color filters light is not the net color that the cala lily tells by way of its earth sign. 11 �IV Night is her skin, its pleats the quiet fold of her. Background and foreground are the memory of a skin wearing dynasties of her. A bird touches night and her skin moves as if it were tied to this. As if a mass accumulates in a narrative of space. Now preserves as a robin opening out of its capacity in me. I want to pet it. I want to cry. The intimacy of a word before it is a word, so that it’s now, in the interval, wears its own full body. 12 �How many tiers live in a word and the hues of the tiers in the space of the word’s awareness. I, the word, in the space of my form, imaging my form, like a lion in its death throes. I swallow you and emergence in a word. (The word’s shape is how death looks like this image.) A cold press of wind through a word’s tired body could be hell or a word separate from its word. 13 �To feel into a word, which may be neutral, but may be like an animal who gets the word, as if the word were a lesion in its body. The lesion could be freedom because a word has no location, like a break in the hills. (Mostly our words are skeletons of themselves.) One senses the transparent quality of its body, an unchangeable power that runs alongside its body. I am a word. I am the ultimate fearless word, beauty or sky so that there is nothing in the way. 14 �A word lands on her cheeks. Unspeakable is the word. Unspeakable is the crutch, the cane of the word, the transparency of the word that relates to her as a body. As how several letters cast a sense of time, like a painting casts depth, which is the image of death in a room. Then the dream of the word amalgamates. First there’s sky, then the full comportment of a body. Sky-swaddled words catch the light of death. I want to believe each word, like pray to the word, because you want to believe in its denial, forgiveness, everything. 15 �A word lay in snow. If you lift the snow and suspend your idea of the possible, it’s like space linking space to all constellations of that word. The sheer resplendence of a word, as how the daughter of a word, a whole lineage pouring out from its god-father. A child picks up a word. It’s the enjoyment of the word, the shape of all commodious expressions that the mind living in that word carries. In a tapestry of texts, I am in the moment of one, as if I had gone to sleep. 16 �V I juxtapose pink with weather, seeing color emerge from shape. Pink constellates to a pig’s body. Pink’s trajectory, inclusive of pig, breeds pink into a legacy, but the real pink transmits its pinkness to the pig. The pig looks pink because it’s lost track of the possibility of being made vivid. (A rose is a rose is a rose brilliantly demonstrates the part of a rose that’s impossible.) It burns a background to itself. A tenderness comes out. That’s the leap, the already-known, like a rose seed. 17 �Yes is a style. I grow an extra bone. Here is my bone, which makes me happy. Its yes is and always has existed. But if I misuse it, if now, seeing my bone, I make use of it in a negative sense, which is vivid, even shocking because I carry my own style in them. You are involved with a style of being, relating your experience with a perception of your experience, e.g., crazy-shell pink, but pink reduces itself to nothing. 18 �I am a limb braced on a trapeze, but I am an ostrich dreaming with my eyes shut. If the pink is “swimmy” (it almost makes me cry—I could dwell on something that could happen). The forefather of a dream may be jealous and hoard the dream. (I am again that bird, rosy plumage taut, ribs holding my scrawny body, which is an extremely crowded situation.) What swims around the dream comes back. Me and my projections are put into a bag and I push as hard as I can. 19 �I am trying to fit into one particular bag, which becomes my limbs, a confabulation of infinity. Essence doesn’t flee. Essence stays with being. Time puffs itself into a thing, like saturation, which can resemble a pink color. As how the consumption of time will alleviate time’s stoppage to the degree that the person feels time’s stoppage. How is style, toggling illusory and dream, instead of coming across the material of a dream, offering it space because terror needs space. 20 �VI A teller’s face recedes. Silver bars entrap his shoulder, tie and shirt collar. If you search for his face, but it’s the no-search that finds his face. How much does it cost to find his face? (Now I am a slim finder of his face.) He passes me money. His hand does not touch the bills that I receive because relinquishing receiving, I just take the money. The transaction questions presence. If I arrive on both sides of receiving, everything disappears. 21 �One face of no face moving casually like a normal face. (Though the man is naked, his face seems even more naked.) Because energy needs a context of definite, specific events. If you are handless, there is still the environment of hands, like a throat of hands about to swallow your body. His shirtsleeve is hiked exposing a man’s wrist, vulnerable, droopy, as if the man’s energy floods into his hand, skipping the wrist, which could be the wrist of a different man. The flesh is white. Cold light yields a sting of hours, time defined, no long upright. 22 �The essence of its white is like a king wearing a hand. (That the king is wearing a hand depends on the viewpoint of the person.) A symbol of white spreads across the palm, a legacy of wind, like air that is yours. Something begins, is loosely held in one’s body, casting a sense of depth (as if its symbol is one’s body). A glove on my cupped hand cradles my lung, anchoring to the extreme, up and up to the hand that is so extreme. 23 �It’s how image and matter falter. Mother and child meet but the mother’s mind does not meet. You can see this in her hand, ring finger lax, then the laxing itself takes on existence. First sky, the fatty mound of a thumb, then figures topped by shapes inferred to have existence because sky undeniably has existence. A person’s hand is how sky looks like this body, which is so sad but is not her hand. 24 �VII A woman’s mind is young. It kneels like a child at bedtime. At the breathline of her wash she makes a path. As if a host is sketching the scene in white, the choicelessness of white, which is why it is so alive. One two three childs-of-her-skin hang from the edges, yes, and in them is the color yes. In her skin there is washing and the taste of white as in the climax of living now. 25 �About the logic of white, as soon as you say white, whose living experience can only come from space, she adds passively. The painter paints white as a form of disappearance sourced from the white that is her. So that nothing is derived, like the five kinds of eyes or a woman’s clothes that can only be cleaned by fire. The washerwoman looks down. Down is a color as she sits with her body because how many of us sit, actually sit down in our own body. 26 �Someone leaves. A panel of white looks like a cap and she is confused. It could be a bird with a beach plastered on it, the only spot the deepest bottom of her pupil. If I throw whiteness on the bird, like a piece of paper can be a bird. I touch white out but its geometry blurs, without guile (in its own nature) between what is so fervent. 27 �VIII I wake before dawn and feel the emptiness of blue in my body. The country smells blue and little sprouts push from the earth. Blue light through hills absorbs into space, dismantling wind, coloring distant swallows. Blue may be light but boiled down to the earth of light so that even its image rides on a tiger. 28 �The quivering of earth vanishes with night. Blue is a response in its flimsy filmy costume. Such sweet blue, the nalo of blueness, I mimic. As if a cloud, like Dombipa, in a practicum of itself, throws the skull of itself to the place of its future self. The ground where it lands becomes frozen in the wake of how much blue is possible. A lizard-imitating-a-stone, a flower in natural connate sky, as if blue, sprung with the blue of sky, confabulates through beings to the absolute blue of sky. 29 �As if sound were blue and what sound touches also (inevitably) releases the sound of blue’s body. I live in this ground, a person says, who keeps the mountain close. Release is not into. His body along with a dimple in the meadow, in plentitude of them and what follows from blue’s generosity. I hear its song in the flakes falling downward but its echo is up and the time of the song even higher up. 30 �The sound of a mountain is soft, like a flock gathering inward. (The continual motion of the flock even down to its belly.) Each relaxed posture would be all the positive postures that the flock would be able to express. Sun kneads light into a sound of relating to light, tonsure-snow in sky as it washes over the vastness. I feel susceptible to snow as if I am snow, sun rising over snow, refusing to go to sleep now. 31 �IX A man has himself crafted in day, as if his monasticism lay into precise day. He stumbles upon himself, sniff sniff in day, which is not particularly intelligent, but which is following his body’s refusal. I won’t be day, he says. No! for him is moving ahead, as if a man is sculpted to the precise mind of who he will turn out to be. As if his man precedes his infant and the sound of that cry is so very stunning. 32 �The man in the shape of a bird, his perch against sky, is a large space inside me. Like a bean grows and there is sky (the imprimatur of sky) leaving only the action. If he weren’t sky, ’cause the elements are really deities, if he weren’t a rim of sky hungering for a space to be. Seeing beyond the man, flashing back but still beyond the man, seeing a bird whose profile appears to be part of the sky. 33 �When a man is a bird, the left of him shutters and he hides a little. Then the conviction of no, its dead-on precision of place. No is accurate, its discipline is accurate, the precision of reverent so solid and solemn. No-sky shatters the upaya of mortality, what forms in one’s mind, like lace on a tree. Will the man topple? He hovers on a ledge. A thick sinuous rope hugs the caliber of who he will be there. 34 �X Devotees mingle among bolts and bolts of fabric as if in this course they are studying water as all elements, but not sex. Ears are exclusive of sex. She lays in a room worrying if her water is enough. Exclusive looks like branches of a tree. She becomes the fabric wildly and coils and how many bolts will fill the bottom of her underworld. Joy abides in the flooding of the fields, in the bones of her voice (having metabolized her voice). 35 �The person says no, he doesn’t want sex with her, which she feels in her ears, water on people’s doorsteps. Seeing the water hearing, as if that’s the that of the first stage. A ritual vase holds the cup of your essential water, which is your dead poured slowly but sounding like a roar because you’re dead. As if one’s mind, replete with death’s form, like when can an animal convene if everything violet embodies a just-broken crucifix. 36 �A consort of energy maps intelligence onto place, like death is a place and she dances on the place. The place is dead yet searches in itself for a feeling. Dancing on a corpse, holding the mace of a baby’s body (what prevails between dead and the clean air of its body). Jumpstarting dead, regarding oneself as dead. Watching myself leap right into her. 37 �XI A carousel of birds raises a curtain with its beak and I pop out. (It’s a charm on my mother’s charm bracelet.) Rhinestones on her sweater are flecks of light shaped like birds whose fingers touch the bottom of the sea. An imprint of the bird remains in the sea. All animals and beings are the size of the sea, she is telling me. Lightly, lightly, like froth on sea, we lay our footprints out over the land. 38 �As if a bird becomes a bird first inside its own belly. The ease of its float, so hospitable and safe. Such nakedness stalks the nothingness of space. The flight exists and then the bird. First, if he is perched, as if a wrong thing will be completed in him. (The grip is what’s completed, that it has already happened.) Like the gait of a bird whose shape scatters. I see the songs instead of hearing them suddenly. One sings. One sings. Thus he is above himself, explicating what may slip away. 39 �The logic of a bird is the same as winter sky. Look straight into its eyes and it becomes invisible. What’s this math that makes a double bird but the bird is there anyway pecking at the icicles. I live in a cave and you can’t inherit it. Birds make my cave legible. Its snow runs wild (which is how the bird can remain quite healthy). 40 �Were it a bird or cloud in the shape of a bird, a place in sky repelling its illusion in space. Were I snow falling on birds’ wings, am I in its song, esoteric. Aloneness is there despite the bird trembling. You can feel it in its space, what he cannot sing to you. The bird and I are brothers. Our song is the same. Throw a spearhead and it’s the same. It will always become a flower. 41 �XII A tendency to real occurrence turns into space. A person is space. He is white, having been consumed by fire ravenously. His eyes lay on his face, like the words of his face (what would be taken from me manually in abutment to my suicide). The awareness is itself but also the source. Its seriality in space follows death along the trail of its body. That space between I and willing to die, that streak of I, like the nature of the real person habituated to I, but not definite, slightly fishy. 42 �If she thinks about the man or remembers thinking him into experience, a shift occurs, invisible yet definitive, who she is, which is so real. Because his skin is night now. A skin of wanting peering at a body, a locale. He separates from time as his swishy body folds, not physically (he is still groping) but the grope looks like a river. He gropes like a person in the slow motion of a dream, more and more till it is no longer slow, but some preternatural sub-slow, a mirror image of slow’s interior. 43 �The man’s death appears violent because the man himself is violent, but it is just death. Being a natural pause between death and its appearance. I no longer wish for omission, a map of space swallowed by some organic, mechanical process. The line between impression and breath, awareness and space, digs into space, mixing mind with space. 44 ��The Twelve Nidānas is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The twelve nidanas Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2012 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780985884314 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_052 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 52 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/1b8b5da245dbfa8c3ac3ff356e26a74d.pdf f6275d0e746bd6eebb4c38352316b9f6 PDF Text Text The Tethering of Mind To Its Five Permanent Qualities �also by gail sher PROSE 7RITING THE &IRE� 9OGA AND THE !RT OF -AKING 9OUR 7ORDS #OME !LIVE s 2006 4HE )NTUITIVE 7RITER� ,ISTENING TO 9OUR /WN 6OICE s 2002 /NE #ONTINUOUS -ISTAKE� &OUR .OBLE 4RUTHS FOR 7RITERS s 1999 &ROM A "AKER�S +ITCHEN s 1984/2004 POETRY THOUGH ACTUALLY IT IS THE SAME EARTH s 2008 4HE (AIKU -ASTERS� &OUR 0OETIC $IARIES s 2008 7HO� ! ,ICCHAVI s 2007 #ALLIOPE s 2007 old dri’s LAMENT s 2007 4HE #OPER 0HEASANT #EASES )TS #ALL s 2007 %AST 7IND -ELTS THE )CE s 2007 7ATCHING 3LOW &LOWERS s 2006 DOHA s 2005 2!'! s 2004 /NCE 4HERE 7AS 'RASS s 2004 REDWIND DAYLONG DAYLONG s 2004 "IRDS OF #ELTIC 4WILIGHT� ! .OVEL IN 6ERSE s 2004 ,OOK AT 4HAT $OG !LL $RESSED /UT IN 0LUM "LOSSOMS s 2002 -OON OF THE 3WAYING "UDS s 2001 ,INES� 4HE ,IFE OF A ,AYSAN !LBATROSS s 2000 &IFTY *IGSAWED "ONES s 1999 3AFFRON 7INGS s 1998 /NE BUG � � � ONE MOUTH � � � SNAP� s 1997 -ARGINALIA s 1997 ,A s 1996 ,IKE A #RANE AT .IGHT s 1996 +UKLOS s 1995 #OPS s 1988 "ROKE !IDE s 1985 2OUGE TO "EAK (AVING -E s 1983 �!S ON THINGS WHICH �HEADPIECE TOUCHES THE -OSLEM s 1982 &ROM !NOTHER 0OINT OF 6IEW THE 7OMAN 3EEMS TO BE 2ESTING s 1981 �The Tethering of Mind To Its Five Permanent Qualities Gail Sher - night crane press 2009 �Copyright 2009, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978–0-9794721-5-2 �For Brendan ��contents New Year’s Day Swimmers 1 Barn Yard 19 Halloween 29 Dead 35 The Palliative of Mind 61 ��new year’s day swimmers i In fir trees in sky, bathers on grass in no particular order. Towels strewn in no particular order. Swimmers mostly standing in water, in sunny pool though light is muted. Muted sounds from low benches at certain distances (air the color of crisp blue). 1 �Clouds, sky, day, in perfect symmetry of day. Image of boy now fading under water in shadow of darker blue water. Pale day occurring above cold pools. Day is there next to white water and waders’ bird heads. Is white completely calm (sober) water. 2 �As token of figure bathing and what she feels about bathing without reference to motion and breath. Without reference, motion and breath are the composition. A photographer sees breath as blue shadows on the bottom of a pool. The pool has no sides, no bottom, so it spills over. Motion is outside breath in language bonded by the requisite of death in the picture. Swimmers tread water waiting in waveless drift, as if volition (or feeling) is the karma of water. 3 �Death is blue waterless waves in moments of preparing the picture (loose clear bodies of boys in cold swim water; bland postures of bodies wading at water’s edge). Bodies wade inside the water without reference to themselves in the water. Only the language of themselves wading. In time before as if wading in advance. Years pass in the person wading before the water. Proportions occur in composition of boys, water, red-and-white ball and the pool’s various surfaces. 4 �An image breaks in the internal place between two bodies. To place herself beneath the weighty water, being water and the brain of water, is being back ‘in’ water, as in ‘mother water.’ Being queer is not being the thought of oneself as that. Being queer is the same as if one is occurring. 5 �A field of sealed bodies limps mentally toward water. Is repeated but is thin (what occurs lapses). If she occurs is separate. The sealed bodies of waders drift off-shore submerged. 6 �Which is not that occurring either as it exists, ceasing and occurring. A length of sea, down in her. Immersed in water—being time—suited or in the cold flesh of water. As if time around the water, which when occurring, is being ceasing there. An Oranda’s bulging eye perceives the pale flow of water as fingers of water, time around its head. Mere voice spins on its tail toward familiar sense of twisted water, eons of them wearing water. 7 �A syllable in the foreground is a serendipitous presence. (Others watching others in water somewhere else.) One’s hands shed sound (the intelligence of sound). Two swans in the twist of their necks. One’s hearing is the silent swans under them in the lake. One’s hearing is adjacent to the sound of them (now lit in slinky underlake, honks simmering in little shore peep-hole). 8 �ii A year ends below water. Several bodies appear surrounded by gray light. In portentful time of being in the time of that which is as yet unmanifested. The time of a wave, say, in the advent of sound before it is heard by those with hands in parkas. Gray dawn as sound is placed on faces treading near-motionless water and expressionless bodies standing in boots at the sea’s edge. 9 �Also the experience of facing water is her facing water whether herself inside incipient sense of water. Hearing is passed through the heads of those staring. Is an expression of sea—hearing form (entropy). Others say nothing but in their minds is the hearing of those watching. Which is indistinguishable from sea. And from time. Water hearing water in the windless waiting of cold day. Its internal sound is an object of water’s mind. The heads of those immersed in water is also sound. One’s hearing is also below water. 10 �One is being hearing and at the same instant hearing. One’s interior sea is an object and at the same instant the mind that apprehends an object. There is no silence in one. Sea and words are sea hearing hearing. One imagines oneself facing hearing as aspect of hearing’s sound. 11 �On a plain there is water. Somewhere far off I hear wind or sea shattering. A person sees direction and space without the intelligence of space (so that she is its mute face). Faces stare at water being primitive and without location vis-à-vis water’s actual boundary. Water is there, not for but being repeating. Staring repeats the aegis of a view inclusive of itself. 12 �A body hangs from the topmost place of water. Inside a wave fades, e.g., there is no interior to the wave. Yet she resides in ‘no interior.’ Seeing inside the water’s legs which is hanging. Headless legs stand in seafoam. Others look out being on legs though the dripping in between is dry. New Year’s air is dry and solemn today bent near legs. A sheer leg. 13 �iii Looking through grass toward young sea water. A structure holds sea in and out of green sea-water. Long slab of gray cold water, bodies lashed to themselves. Nothing occurs simultaneous to itself, in deep awareness of preciousmoment’s disappearance. In the barren waste of vast, thin water, a falcon wears sea wild at its edge. In slab of sea that is Dead Sea, kiosks are seen by one looking at the water. 14 �Seen-through water, a shelf of water. The sense of sea pulled back. Mind is green, then alone. A girl’s mild body holds up like a slip. A man is thin where he grows without hearing. Thin bird, moving against falling. Like craziness repeating, a mind realizing hearing (the stakes of hearing) in the context of women asleep. 15 �She glances at the sea, though she is its body. I move but day too moves along with its falling. The long day slides below low clouds. White lines cut the hill horizontally. Falling below falling, the falling of day clings, but it moves down the hill like a second pair of shoes. A slow dog moves slowly with the blossoms’ light, falling with day down to the cold sea. 16 �A dog trots through sky, albino skin a beautiful borne white. It shimmers in a line though it is alone. Other dogs are its borders. As if she were day, a blind dog stops. At first it is sight, then low sight, then she is the sight. Islands of rock stand in dark blue water made to appear as distant person in yellow vest. 17 �Do you reside? Do you not reside? Energy, like the water, is low, seemingly bland, unruffled. Bather’s flesh is real. Mermaid’s flesh glows in creamy ground of water, frosty-blue tail, sharp flapper, pointy. Shadows on walls, like flesh, in passing moments, is each moment. A full moon hangs but it is separate from night and does not spread its light anywhere. 18 �barn yard A woman sees cows from behind slated blinds. (One slow green-lit cow.) Luminous tiny birds in dark green columns are still-small, lowflying across the meadow. The sound of a bird is the girl’s feeling, not the empty bird. One’s hearing is in a mass of birds struggling (invisible scurrying touchable-but-outside the occurrence of their bodies). 19 �Nothing moves (being destitute of hill in ‘flat’ hill at the ravine’s bottom). Nothing moves. Cuds move in undercurrent of dark motionless stream. A photographer sees sky/hay/hill as composition of linear fields, muted colors divided by thin bars of black. A tree’s interior edge holds sky. A rooster crows in thick gray air that rises then falls away rhythmically. 20 �If I can replace myself then, taking back something from before I appear ordinary. The shame of the familiar, like an ordinary barn. A slum in light has perfection of the afternoon. There are lines, she is told, of carefully wrapped people. People are dead in different colored shirts. In the sky’s translucent provenance, an elder piece of her, crooked in its arms like a waltz. 21 �ii Trees are black in aslant nature of coming together as trees. (Dog in sweet complexion of light.) A woman eats cheese and says her bread, which is wood, wafts from the mouth of a young girl. Seeing imbues the loaf with food. A girl in birds, in black sea light, rides along a canal of light. I am their teacher so I am hurrying to get there. I begin to run. 22 �A woman eats holding her mouth above her. Figures emerge in rock moving normally in awareness of shorn fields. Blackbirds rest on someone’s hands in cessation of being in a particular field of sight. (Is endurance of hands or the property of folding one’s fingers to make a perch for the bird’s claws.) A photograph of birds are the same birds omitted from their form so that the print is not of them but cut out from them and from the cessation of them. Form without the appendages of form is an image of pure sight (omitting that action). 23 �A red one, say, in skin narrower than herself. If she’s confined letting the skin loose. A girl is a chair sometimes in expanded position of slingback. If she’s washed herself. Where she would be fully sleeping next to it. Feeling its walls. An empty mouth like sun comes where she does it, though its layers and layers smell like the inside of her body. His pee in the gush of some riverless doorway there. A ‘we’ suspends out, being outside water peeing or inside to feel the warm drift of legs. 24 �iii Mute in sun. Of bare air in day. Dog in sand spreading time through tall blue summer. A man sees time from before or during himself, days of himself in continuous parallel lines. A road veers off to unseeable distant landscape known by him once. 25 �Waiting is touching. Still-summer air inside seated person in blank moment of dog. A woman faces dog, though light becomes something modular. Emptiness and light compose the luminosity of her voice beyond the composition of any structure. Emptiness and light compose the luminosity of his face. He looks at the grass and this knowledge makes the grass warm. 26 �Trees listen like grass, the other of myself, interior line of time endowing hearing with time. Trees soak through time. So she’s dead. There, in morning light. The other of time spanned over light. Not as in death but simply ceasing, though she continues to be alive. 27 �Day falls and if she thinks it is her mother, a bell rings in her skin. Light falls like a mask while she eats her bread. I am dizzy with bread, she acknowledges. What is the connection between resting as a place where light is a place and the immanence of the place like a dark (dissociative) fugue? What is the connection between her face in the sky and the nevernever land of her being my mother? The immanence of her face, flat as water, though I have never known her at all? Slowly she becomes my mother. Night falls on black branches of something generous. 28 �halloween A child reads. Winter sun pours through the salon windows. Is that a skull? I mean on your big toe. Can I see your toe? Would you show my daughter your toe? she repeats to the girl applying peachy-orange polish on her child’s. That is cool! O my god. That is so cool. Would you like one? You can have one. I mean I’m just saying you can if you want. It’s up to you. Oneself as a child with those who frequent the salon being absorbed. Sun drains from the sky into the salon’s flattening skylight. People are not visible, barricaded off, so that she can be arriving there, slowly behind her mother. Her agency cut off. Her mother’s agency also cut off. 29 �A man alone gazes at sky. He is writing. Light pours through the window. Before dawn a man stands at his stove silently filling a thermos. Watching sky someone thinks of him writing. So that the day is expunged with the exception of his writing. A man writes looking at sky. The day is cold in mind of person imagining him writing. The gray lug of sky only appears interiorly. 30 �Things ahead of one occurring. A dog seen from its side is not the dog’s profile but ‘as if ’ cut out from its side. The dog is itself, not overlaid on its side. Seeing the dream’s sound, being boisterous automaton of dog overlaid on its side. Hearing-behind-hearing is simultaneous occurrence of before and after hearing how hearing exists cut out from its own side. 31 �The rose is from a former dream. It could be blue. Many windows open, exposed to the sun’s heat. I dreamed the dream before dreaming it, standing in sun imagining the rose alive. Imagining oneself abandoned in the sense of alone on a street with or without flowers. Its beauty outside the purview of one. 32 �The wing of her foot in dream of blue-lit space where a peacock squanders herself. A nest of small birds also squander themselves. A child squatting before the nest stirs the nest with a stick. It comes to one there, the sequence of who she is. If eating there, being ahead of one’s thorough eating, her back to eating as in the dream before the tree. One’s dream is not later, e.g., tall wing of peacock squandering is whole (may not be crushed or heard outside itself later). 33 �One remains behind, which is a direction of force. Staying in ‘behind’ as if one were exterior to oneself, in a ‘hole’ of oneself. Being ‘there’—in the imprint of seized—the thought seized. The smell of cold as minutes pass. To sleep or to sleep back where is is in sleep or dreaming he is allowed to sleep. 34 �dead i In morning light reading. A woman sits informally, elbows on chair, in square of light from window to her left. Porosity of light holds resting in silent form. Day too is quiet like a river drifts, arcs over her hearing. A woman holds the color of herself, height of room and quiet, as if time and mind exist because their origins are fallow. 35 �A woman in light merges with light which is postureless. She is young inside her sitting spread in morning light. A woman in chair is necessarily alone. Shadows bend wood against its destination. Matter dissolves in undercurrent of herself drifting away from her harmless body. Is it flowers or my mind emptying of them, though they remain in sight? 36 �She may also be old. Her neck is old bent over a book. (Bathing cap and girl with octopus staring at sand, not moving.) So dying arises. A viewpoint uninscribed. A place utterly familiar dissolves inside you. Time dissolves, carved out of snow. Yellow is how, in the fury of night, while daylight on land is, like a woman in the morning. 37 �ii In darkness behind something, can of something. A building glows as if it were teeth. Naming the mother out. Naming her outside beauty. Like the stillness of a flavor, finding it in an old can. I wind myself around the can’s sweet edge. 38 �The synapse between light and light’s real life. I am real, she thinks. Like a gash in sky, a dune is not washed of lit dune night. From beyond light, the deep act of being in light. It rocks in a tree she fears may be stolen. 39 �So it’s singular light, its own knothole of light that slips through the flower’s markings. A color is heard. (Net of warmth, through the grass to the tree’s edge.) Wilderness accrues in great spots of white. The dog is my mother rotating on earth white-skinned. 40 �O she is dirty. Like the end of memory, some form on her body beyond her own grasp. A tourist at death impersonates someone trying to be her again and again. Another person keeps her. In latent light the rescinding memory of that boundary. Another person is a memory of sound retaining the physical latency of having once heard sound. 41 �iii A woman is bare in bare bowl of wind. Lips green, pain the shape of day. She divides pain into sections. A man waits for death watching birds’ concoctions from their throat. Fresh wind blows waking birds in net of family bowls. 42 �I draw wind in my mind. Your beard creates little steps for it to rest. Stepping over stones where rocking animals sleep. (She’d thought the leaf had them also.) A buzzard begins, swings its heavy, lazy body. It’s the leaf ’s death. Inside rocking’s skeleton. It is young-dead, waiting in the coverlet for birth to happen. 43 �A big bowl opens. A vulture easily in distant sky fills around my being. The placelessness of birth dawns in her mind. May you belong here. May you swing over from death’s outer edges. Crickets hearing death grow still. (And underneath, as if the chirps were water.) Like a fledgling’s open throat. A fledgling seeing a flower knows her throat after that day. 44 �iv A word touches you after me and before me. Something appears blue, scrapes the backbones of this color, wishing that I am a blue person in the supreme daylight of blue. The shadow of your word falls against my home. Who you are in the dream of my mother whose tongue has touched a lighted field. Rushing sky she will touch other animals who face downward. 45 �So I begin in words. Sitting down and emptying her, like a tourist latent in a guesthouse window. Will I recognize her face? (Because my mind preempts her face.) Once I forget. I race down the entire dream, imbricated, scales loosely dangling, like the mother-tongue of a stranger. Hearing forms a line (a column in the mountain whose groin is the mountain). 46 �My hearing is a sea of birds pressed inside their voices. My hearing is a world shed as a locale once qualified to constellate mind. Like a paper doll I lay flat. Her eyes follow my voice, seeing my hearing back to its loosened page. 47 �Who are you mother? Where, among myself, can you plan who I am? You are born inside my body, lusting after my thigh. A body parts from where it’s left off. An ace or queen, a paradigm which can be touchless. If you fake me, who will I be ? 48 �v If you appear my image of you shifts. (Not having readiness for a person shifts the mind in which the potential person exists.) Which shifts the language creating that person. I translate you to being in and out of your presence and the translation is like your presence within the boundary of a word. The thought of clean air is a foray toward a word, as if a word were a place for her to store herself. Inside the word’s claw. A woman shaves words picking up one at a time from a little bowl. 49 �The word’s ‘other side’ exists prior to the word. There is no hearing outside being hearing, thinking one’s sound is that. A word’s sound is separate from its wordness. The ‘action’ (karma) of a word’s sound being also separate. Reading sound, recognizing a notation as conveying one’s interior sound simultaneous to hearing in one where ‘one’ is the same. Outside one is also the same. There is no same outside time. A sound repeats but it is not the same (though its label is the same). Time doesn’t repeat. A person doesn’t repeat. A crow caws, which may be interior at the same time as hearing in one. 50 �Jays caw. Jays won’t eat plums though there are millions of fallow plums. A line spreads to the indefinite distance altering with every shift of light the millions of redwings on phone wires. Already her skin occurring in the phone wires, dark in dark night. The result? Sound hearing itself as sound or hearing itself as hearing with or without sound. 51 �A cello at dusk makes the blue sound of a river. A crow’s caw is itself throbbing. A woman bird struts across the green. A woman’s wooden bird is violet-colored (loud) in the smooth cream of a dream. Her craw is full (empty of sound) carried in her violet dress. She groks some sound strutting through leaves near the riverbed. In the pearls of her feathers is a head being her enjoyment. The young throb of her body is pure mahogany throb of young bird then (as if birds were, already occurring, in moment before now). Snow birds in exotic black flap then. Telling who telling who in mirrorlike shaft of moon. 52 �vi One fox in late light empties like sun. (White head in snow spilling herself into us.) Suddenly swirling so that snow scrapes snow, continuously, like a tuba. Fingering these years of snow, fragments of snow, suddenly (where I am). I wash myself in thin night land, like night on a pony, skin scratched of light. A glint of fog makes them be together in a pile. 53 �A pile of horses neighs, stops in weatherless hill, eye-whites in mud. Stepping backwards into water, nostrils bleached in odd pattern of children. One horse empties into red Mongolian arrows. Washing herself like a black bead. Washing themselves into white sand. A meadow is where their thin black shawls dissolve into water. Wild birds dissolve into scaffolding of water. 54 �Water glows flat. A brown girl enters a river in late light. Among her is a swamp. Now present in a dance as if she is waking (first) between herself. A girl enters her body first. Sisters occur. (I am borrowed together with my mother.) As if hearing the cry of her own future child imprinted in her femur. A fetus moves, birds, trees, former pets. 55 �Wool is made from parallel sheep in arbitrary cubicles in sky. He sings to them such that his voice is like a large mother’s palm. Here is a lamb from where it was once. (Because she saw him once. Sky on clean line of ceiling, rafters holding up ceiling.) Though her condition arises from touching, she cannot imagine herself as an object. He lays the bird aside so that his children may see it but not know it. 56 �vii A proprietor is thin. Her arms are shaped like paper. Which she folds like a doll’s paper. Drawers full of paper are of different weights and textures like a man she knows that reminds her of a city. He plays horn. The gold in her cloak becomes the color of his skin waiting. The time of his voice seems separate from the steady sotto voice that could be a doll’s voice. 57 �She takes place in his legs like the legs of her husband. (Legs fold in manner of his countrymen.) She thinks, Good. Now I can be like a line moving forward outside present time. The edge of her in her clothes is so thin it might break in her clothes. Not a fetish but still knowing that the fetus is buried. 58 �A child breaks up. Is intensity not-yet-worked. (Repeatedly becoming an object of formed or shaped intensity.) A brass’s ethos retains. It places anywhere in a formerly-worked object. Hearing the stark name of a previous person. One may write the person. Entering memory (an object in her mouth), ladling it up, placing it slowly where it belongs. 59 �Your willowness enters song. You delicately twist your hair to a feeling that’s like a country. The pain of sight together, now in a specific setting, where a person’s capacity for song (metonymy) fits tight. A dog gobbles flowers. Space retains his passing. A child waits, like weeds wait for flowers, retaining the passing of former names. 60 �the palliative of mind i A rock drinks an animal’s life, easing it into the mountain. If a sentence goes on, it’s her mind stringing pieces of her eyes. Seeing the movement before the animal and hunt and hunt, as if its skin were alive. Before the air, that was the air of the people, lilies were private flowers, she was thinking. (A flower’s skin may be public skin yet lay beneath private air.) An eagle turns, repairing air, like a squirrel turns to face a flower, as if some band affixed him to the flower and he is sure it is that flower. 61 �The gallop of a squirrel is mixed with air, carved air, yellow like cowslips. Throwing itself after air (but the cool flank of air). I know air already, you murmur. The way light hits a flower or stone at dawn. Night behind night, blood in sunlight rising. An animal, young in sky, washes back from sky. So I memorize sky, at the same time think of sky. 62 �Wind becomes sky, light through distant tree trunks if sky were there, or, light with trees with no sky allowed. A bird hops on grass, weathering the grass, leaving little igloos of white. Lines of a bird grow down the bird. Will grass survive its wing’s blue tip? An old jay caws but its caw lacks the shrill, coarse modulations of a jay’s caw. 63 �A bird in flight brushes a flower’s head. Waiting rests as day passes in the flower’s knowledge. How the day as it rests admits further day. Like a flower is alive and its secondary life, encapsulated off, will not be allowed to overflow into it. When the day ceases to be day because, you say, it’s fixed, I know this. A quip of birds from the far river rise. A hill slides into the valley’s dark night while someone reads pressing himself open. 64 �ii A gull circles a wedge of water, marking the water with her eye. The memory of her skin is limitless, like the memory of her cry, before a kill or later for the sake of others. Wind, too, gains qualities by its forcefulness with things, its hand, say (a piece of sun cut off). A crack in light, like a painting of light. The palette of wind is gold, she mutters, the boundary of a man playing chess in light being the dead person. 65 �A flower emits voices behind falling sun. A flower is soft and the pain of soft reminds her of a sea of heads. As if her life dreams its own violence. If a bird disappears, she may have asked for this to happen. She begins to think that mountains wash out mountains. That the sea of heads form a land on which to walk, which she calls the isthmus of larks. 66 �So a bird flies flat and what is it about its sleek blue mind. Is a bird a bird or quality of place dawned by the bird? you mutter. You look at a chirp, though it could be surreal. A tree comes just at the point of sky. Phenomenology of the tree rides not so much on the stature of the tree but like the tap of a cane, where it goes after it is hidden. 67 �A sycamore branch in late light sheds, as if sun splashes scattered shards of larks through needles of light-fall. Time is little drops like from a spout drip-dropping the bough. Its stem is underground, someone says, and I have a memory of a double stream flowing deep beneath the earth. You tap on the stream to awaken the stream so that the leaves stop shaking their light out of it. 68 ��The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The tethering of mind to its five permanent qualities Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2009 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780979472152 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_051 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 80 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/d7478a7f1a5376f177cbeb618a555b5d.pdf 1c0875b619fa7f47f25d99dec58d9bc4 PDF Text Text “Told with unreserved honesty and clarity…particularly relevant to women striving to discover and accept themselves on any spiritual path” —EdgeWork Writers’ Collective Chop chop chop. The carrot is now a row of paper-thin, salad-ready (they are too skinny for soup or mixed vegetables) slices. I am momentarily in control. Chopping block, hocho (knife) and me standing, cutting the decisive widths. I feel exhausted, but the wafer-size carrot wheels are perfect. —The Moon of the Swaying Buds Night Crane Press Gail Sher lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area as a poet, teacher and psychotherapist. She has written three books on writing as a practice and more than thirty books of poetry. For additional information and to read her poetry online go to gailsher.com or to library.buffalo.edu/collections/gail-sher The Moon of the Swaying Buds Gail Sher Gail Sher Bashō your rainproof paper hat made with your own hands the one imitating Saigyō’s … I too have felt desperately alone The Moon of the Swaying Buds The Moon of the Swaying Buds is the psychological and spiritual memoir of a contemporary American poet, written as haibun (prose combined with haiku). The heart of the book is a poetic evocation of Gail Sher’s years of practice in one America’s first Zen communities, and the breakthrough (“Yes practice”) that ended her formal relationship to Zen and enabled her to be herself. �The Moon of the Swaying Buds �Also by Gail Sher PROSE Reading Gail Sher Poetry, Zen and the Linguistic Unconscious One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive From a Baker’s Kitchen POETRY Elm Early Work Pale Sky Five Haiku Narratives Ezekiel Sunny Day, Spring Mingling the Threefold Sky The Twelve Nidānas Figures in Blue The Bardo Books White Bird Mother’s Warm Breath The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries though actually it is the same earth East Wind Melts the Ice The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call old dri’s lament Calliope Who, a Licchavi Watching Slow Flowers DOHA Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse redwind daylong daylong Once There Was Grass RAGA Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms Moon of The Swaying Buds Marginalia la KUKLOS Cops Broke Aide Rouge to Beak Having Me (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem From another point of view the woman seems to be resting �The Moon of the Swaying Buds Gail Sher night crane press Third Edition 2017 �Publication history: The Moon of the Swaying Buds. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2001. Limited edition; fifty copies signed and numbered by the author. Out of print. The Moon of the Swaying Buds: A Spiritual Autobiography. Boulder, CO: EdgeWork Books, 2002. A commercial printing of the 2001 edition; subtitle added by the publisher. Out of print. The Moon of the Swaying Buds. Emeryville, CA: Night Crane Press, 2017. Third edition, corrected and reset. The Moon of the Swaying Buds Third Edition Copyright 2017, Gail Sher gailsher.com Night Crane Press 15oo Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher ISBN: 978-0-9978313-1-3 �for Brendan �Haibun: a prose/haiku combination used by BashŌ [1644-1694] in his travel diaries. On each page, the haiku (or, in some cases, the 5-lined tanka) mirrors the emotional underpinnings of the journal-like prose thereby deepening, focusing and stretching its implications. vi �I am amazed that Tosai, upon reading the sound of an oar slapping the waves chills my bowels through this night . . . tears has only to say “The poet, unable to go to sleep, must be pondering over time that has passed and time that is to come.” misty rain veils Mount Fuji only to the eyes vii ��Contents BOOK ONE: Mountains mutsuki: the moon in which the grains of rice are set to germinate 2 kisaragi: the moon of the swaying buds yayoi: the time of germination 44 104 BOOK TWO: Plains uzuki: the moon of deutzia flowers 146 satsuki: the moon of transplanting 182 mina-zuki: the waterless moon 213 BOOK THREE: Rivers naga-tsuki: the moon in which the nights grow long ha-zuki: the moon in which the leaves fall fumi-zuki: the moon of the heads of rice 265 282 BOOK FOUR: Sky shimo-tsuji: the hoar-frost moon kamina-zuki: the godless moon 334 302 shiwasu: the moon in which monks scurry from house to house reading the sutras Glossary 412 399 223 ��BOOK ONE Mountains �m u tsuki the moon in which the grains of rice are set to germinate �Like An Empty Chapel �There has always been a slight feeling of discomfort, a lack of gracefulness in my relationship with activities. During long summer afternoons, I’ll lie on a cot on our upstairs porch feeling astray, a foreigner to the porch. Or I’ll wander up the block to a field where I catch butterflies. There are monarchs and swallowtails as well as grasshoppers and other interesting bugs. I doze in the sun and capture one or two. The idea of catching butterflies sparks my imagination. I think, “I’ll go across the street and catch butterflies,” and then, while I do, I think, “It’s a beautiful sunny day and I am catching butterflies.” But there is a gap. I am disrupted in myself and cannot enter the activity, offer it enough of myself to make it come alive. up down tiny canyon butterfly 4 �I have a snowflake tree. Once a year it blooms hyacinth-colored balls that shatter several weeks later. This tree is on the side of our house with the neighbors whom I never see except when their granddaughter comes in her white dress and everyone gets in the car. fondling for a moment the morning sun— her barren nest 5 �I feel exposed on the front lawn and only play there occasionally. I never swing on our swings or eat at our picnic table or do anything laid out for me. Sometimes I bounce a ball against the side of the house near the driveway. dusk: a kingfisher’s call through the shallow rain 6 �Our dining room is covered with thick black wallpaper. Embedded in its blackness are turquoise and pink birds. Since family rarely go there (it is saved for company), it acquires a mysterious largeness—like an empty chapel—where I love to stand and stare out the window. empty now my parakeet’s cage rattles in the wind 7 �I am curious about my mother. In her top bureau drawer, she keeps a ring of keys on a rabbit’s foot. Who is the person that puts her stamps in a crystal box along with beads and pieces of candy? dovelet: folds of pink in your fluffy gray breast 8 �Softly Blowing Bluestem �I have magic places. The trellis near my window supports a system of tight red buds. If it weren’t for the trellis, I think to myself—a flimsy structure—the rose vines would trail on the ground. dawn— some pink, some blue twine along my sill 10 �I plan a garden. I go over and over the beds that are already in my backyard plot. I want something more exotic, more dangerous to grow, more extremely beautiful. coiled on mud a lily pad swirls in the floodwater 11 �I like to bake cookies. I like to read in my green chair and be under the covers writing in my diary. I like to knit. These activities involve my hands. I have a lot of “hand energy” that must be expressed or I feel at loose ends. sudden squall— I wrap my hands around the teacup 12 �I rock incessantly. I rock in my desk at school, I rock in bed at night. In my room I have a rocking chair and I rock and rock to a record of the Uncle Wiggley Stories (Peter Rabbit and Br’er Bear) and the theme from The Third Man. the sea . . . its rhythmic chant over and over 13 �I choose an escape route. If anything ever happens and I need to get to Joyce Bloom’s fast, I can crawl under our fence and run across the vacant lot, which would save me two blocks. stalking down the slope she vanishes in your shadow . . . softly blowing bluestem 14 �The Nails Through His Limbs Are Thick and Intrusive �Each day I walk to school which takes about half an hour. It is bitterly cold. Bundled up so that I can hardly move, I leave home numb in my being for lack of love or enthusiasm for anything. low hills gray with drizzle . . . again 16 �On my block lives another girl who is in my grade. I go by for her and if she is ready, we walk together. One morning her front door opens just as I approach, so I wait on the sidewalk. As she and her mother are saying goodbye, her mother leans over and whispers something in her ear. I freeze. I think, “Her mother just told her something bad about me.” As we walk, I am aware that she “covers up” with chatter her secret knowledge of my badness. shooing the buzzard away from her chick in a whirl of snow 17 �The teacher assigns us a picture to draw. I cannot. I cannot think of anything to draw and I cannot draw. I sit emptily starring at the blank sheet of coloring paper centered on my desk. All the children are absorbed. little seal calf the sun, the spray your sallow blubber still 18 �Increasingly humiliated, and at the same time panicked, I sneak a look at the picture of the little girl across the aisle. I know this is wrong. Her head is bowed to her work and she doesn’t notice me looking (I notice carefully). I see she is making a clown. Its hat is triangular and its body balloon-shaped. I think, “I can do that.” Feeling like a thief, I begin to sketch an inverted triangle which I intend to turn into the top of a clown hat. the shadow moves the yearling . . . freezes 19 �I babysit a lot for the Georges. When the children are asleep I sit in the quiet house and absorb the presence of Jesus of whom there are several paintings. I notice the muted coloring (green and mustard) behind the fleshly glow of Jesus’ body. Shocks of hair fall to his forehead while the nails through his limbs are thick and intrusive. flipping the channel your face— for a split second 20 �Lodging Among the Roots �My mother gives me the feeling that there is something unmentionable the matter with me. When she says, “Go play with your friends,” I “get” from her tone of voice that this is really a suggestion about what I need to do to correct myself. mucky river and you—eyes closed tight— lodging among the roots 22 �I have to go to the bathroom. I go into a public stall and there is urine all over the floor and on the toilet seat and I cannot find a clean place to stand. I end up standing in the urine which soaks through my shoes and socks. Holding myself poised above the wet seat, I relieve myself physically, but come away feeling filthy, contaminated and wrong. leaving the pool— the smell and fissures down my fingertips 23 �Joyce and Marilyn Yawitz occasionally invite me over. I go because my mother gives me the impression that going over to other people’s houses is what normal children do. But I dread it. They have too much of a system going what with their being sisters close in age. righting itself shuddering— gently shaking its wings 24 �Often they want to play with dolls. The dolls belong to them, are empowered by them and have a definite place in their extended family. It is clearly not my family. I am miserable amidst all these foreign personalities and feel totally left out. Joyce and Marilyn are caught up in their make-believe world and don’t notice. I marvel at their enthusiasm. The dolls are just dolls to me, nothing to get excited about. kokeshi1 doll petal-features inked onto your broad, pale face what happened to your arms and legs Sphere for head, cylinder for body, kokeshi dolls are fetish substitutes for murdered children. 1 25 �I feel erased, as if I had carefully dressed for an important event that was subsequently canceled. My mother is all shiny when I come home. “Well, how was it?” she inquires, and I say, “Fine.” dusk— a lone Canada goose vanishes in the leatherleaf 26 �Nibbling the Dresden Grass �I am a very slow reader. The words need to capture my heart, be vitalized by my heart before my mind will accept them. oh my child when I say “daddy has died” you, who can’t imagine beyond tomorrow think it means till then 28 �I am okay in school though it is humiliating to learn after the fact that my two best friends, Sylvia Weinstein and Rebecca Silverman, have for the whole year been doing extra-credit projects for an accelerated group they were asked to be in. I didn’t know about this group. Sylvia tells me accidentally one day in the library. spider I’m sorry even its sigh cools & refreshes me 29 �The familiar feeling of being excluded courses through me. I imagine conversations in which I don’t take part—deciding to have an accelerated program for gifted students, test-taking by promising candidates and then a whole year of meetings with just the special people. I know that regular assignments are hard for me. I am amazed that Sylvia and Rebecca are able to do extra work, that this is known by others, has been discussed, organized, and no one has said anything to me. old broom on the muddy bank wind-swept . . . 30 �Are Sylvia and Rebecca really my friends? Both have an air of being very much a part of something that has nothing to do with me. Sylvia’s something is darker and full of sadness. As soon as we get to her block, I feel her other life come over her. I watch her walking down the rest of her street looking dumpy and old. I am never invited to her house. without its yellow flowers bladderwort—deflated— splattered with mud 31 �I am invited to Rebecca’s house. I instantly sense the order, the higher way of doing things that is established and that gently includes Rebecca. She is not likely to fall by accident into some stray activity because lunch is regularly at 1:00. She seems protected yet free because her parents are very interested in her. I even feel they are interested in me by virtue of my being her friend. monarch pupa . . . swaddled in green dotted with gold 32 �Once Dr. Silverman invites me to participate in an experiment. I feel intensely honored. I am put into a room all by myself and wired up to a machine that administers tiny shocks though I don’t feel them much. frisky lady— around the cow across the ribgrass 33 �The experiment begins to seem interminable. I grow bored in the chair all alone, squirm around and feel increasingly cut-off. When someone finally comes to get me, I learn I was observed through a mirrored window the whole time. I flush with embarrassment. I know enough to realize that in my boredom, my behavior deteriorated way beneath the level of ladylike. The Silvermans are so refined. I feel caught, exposed as a creature too undignified to be Rebecca’s friend. dirt-tipped, matted nibbling the Dresden grass 34 �After this I notice Rebecca doesn’t call me as often and later I hear that instead of going to Hanley Junior High, she will be going to a private school. I think about what this means—a private school. I realize that her parents probably all along planned for her to go to a private school at the juncture when everyone changes schools. Here again is the feeling of many conversations that affect me but to which I am not included. rain again— a solitary sheep in the chocolate grass 35 �A Heifer Slobbers the Filthy Water �One day when I am about twelve, I come home and find my mother sitting dejected in her red chair. “What is it, Mother?” I ask, horrified that the crisis one can feel unremittingly swelling in our household has finally erupted. She is crying and says what I understand to imply that everything is meaningless to her, that she has missed all her chances to be something in life and is miserable. Eventually the idea of returning to school comes up. Here is a ray of hope. “Yes, Mother, why don’t you do that? That would be wonderful!” I feel nervously excited, as if everything depends on this. She says, “I would, but you know, I always get a headache when I have to read something. If it’s assigned, I get a headache making myself read it.” pop! teary-eyes stare at the shriveled rubber 37 �I stand there and rack my brains for an answer. If only I could but I know there is no chance. She’d get a headache. The only thing I can really do is join her in her deadness—or outdo her in her deadness, rendering her alive by comparison. slurping the cone I feel—suddenly— old 38 �Suddenly I hear whispers. Grandpa Herman is dead. He committed suicide. I go to my room and stand in front of my full-length mirror to see if I feel anything. alone in my cabin shadows of the moon hidden by October rain 39 �I stare at the elephant tree across the street. Because my “office” has its own door and my bedroom, which contains it, also has a door, I feel twice removed from the goings-on of the household. This sense of removal, of isolated me next to (they think “part of ”) a group with whom I have some affiliation, some caring and responsibility, becomes a formula for safe me. an old door creaks I doze half listening 40 �Unlike Herman, who is elegant, my mother’s father slurps his soup and makes a mess when he eats dinner with us on Friday night. After dinner he sits in his chair with his pants unbuttoned and sometimes unzipped. I sit in “my” chair, across from him, by the radio and bowl of coffee candy my Grandma specifically places there for me. drizzle-filled trough— a heifer slobbers the filthy water 41 �I picture myself in my room listening to records and playing pick-up sticks on the floor beside my Victrola. The thin doublepointed rods topple in all directions as I, putting my cheek on the cool floor and scanning the scene from underneath, pick them up delicately, one by one. fastening his rollerblade a child kneels by the flat blue lake 42 �Between games I fondle the sticks, rubbing my hands up the finely carved wooden shafts. Their points are like the points of a brand new box of crayolas. the mower recedes— the smell of rain and freshly cut grass 43 �ki s a r agi the moon of the swaying buds �Young Damselfly �My “period” starts, which I don’t understand. It seems unrelated to me. The fact that my body is changing and that I can have babies doesn’t affect me. I am ashamed to be so indifferent. Everyone has spoken of it—much whispering and excitement. I feel untouched. I know that it’s not important. the sun shifts she shifts—then dives into the water 46 �The people in my books are important. Being in my room, organizing my clothes, and listening to music are important. I lie here wondering why I feel so displaced, why I am on a different track, why I can’t put my finger on what it is about my life that is so wrong. bloated upturned nudged by the other fish 47 �I have my world, which is my room. Nothing random exists here. I understand the precise degree of fadedness on the shade of my reading lamp, the diamond stitching in my chartreuse spread, the daily mood of my zebra fish, and the minute changes of expression on the face of the plaster girl supporting the light on my nightstand. The books in my bookcase are all immaculately arranged by subject. As are the movie stars (Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis) on my walls. young damselfly clear-winged and swift above the flower-laden meadow 48 �I read Seventeen and imagine myself in control of my life, which to me means having a consistent and likable self-image. “I have a cocoa brown skirt, soft-colored sweaters, and oxford shoes and that is what I wear.” Or “I have one or two navy blue skirts and many white blouses and that’s all.” Each plan appeals to me as a means of consolidation. As I stare at the girls in Seventeen and read the advice in its articles, I hang onto the words as if everything depends on getting this correct. so insistent— the buzz of the fly trapped in the unplugged fridge 49 �I consider my friends at school, Susie Rothman and Brenda Bierman, who are not like me. Susie actually is better than Brenda. There is something loose about Brenda—a part of her is capable of slipping into a posture that is not her own but she will make her own. She flaunts her unpredictableness, since she knows my life lacks the resources to be unpredictable. satyr: your darts about the stands of Turk’s cap 50 �Susie’s parents know her and give her permission to do or not do things. Susie washes her hair and I ask her how often she washes it and think maybe I should do this too. under a pine and mound of pine-needles— another mound 51 �Nancy Drew’s loner spirit mirrors my own yet-unformed one. Tracking herself assiduously from the perspective of the clues in her current “mystery,” she uncovers a deeper level of reality. When I recognize in George Eliot the same ability to implode the specific with the infinite, it dawns on me (not as a thought but as an impulse) to live my life this way. instar: ever-so-slowly through the tangled foliage 52 �Its Dappled Rib �I like the pause of breakfast and certain fragments of my walk to school—a particular patch of sweet fresh air or a house set back from the street in an intriguing way. And of course Christ the King with its exotic parochial climate. I like the fact that there are bells at school, that time is clearly delineated, though the bells themselves are harsh, not subtly eliciting cosmic overtones like the Zen bells in my later life that deeply stir one’s primal lethargy. night jasmine: lighting my path your white blossoms 54 �I like the quiet hallways and in class the feeling of being warm and contained behind my desk. The desk itself beguiles me with its inkwell, pencil groove, and liftable surface. I sit here enjoying the softness of my short-sleeved sweater, its dyed-to-match cardigan, and the sensuous folds of my skirt pleats as they drape around my thighs. I cannot hear the teacher. Lecture and discussion are like so many buzzing birds filling the air with white sound. summer night— inching over sheets my toes find a cool spot 55 �I don’t care for my tenth-grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson, who has a double chin and little to say, but she praises my paragraph, noting my effective use of “parallel structure.” Her response touches something in me and I think that perhaps I could be a writer. I have never thought of being anything. I read over my paragraph. I actually don’t know what parallel structure is. My use of it must come from some natural ability. I am deeply moved by the idea that I have a natural ability because I always feel so unable. picking a slug off a tender leaf tearing the leaf— its dappled rib 56 �I subscribe to the magazine The Writer, the action in itself carrying a certain unfamiliar yet tingly sort of professionalism. But when The Writer arrives it feels off, wooden and impersonal. The tingly wool of my coverlet, the pregnancy of my guppy, the coziness of my green chair all seem oceans apart from “News,” “Deadlines,” and “Classifieds” thunderheads occlude the sky at dawn, at dusk . . . the moon’s absent face 57 �The fateful words of my father, “Oh, everyone wants to be a writer at one time or another” insert themselves in my being like a violation. My budding “identity” collapses in the face of his savvy. Of course. I should have known. The wish to be a writer is plebeian, trivial, predictable. Everyone wants to be that. raising it shaking it then tucking it in its breast 58 �Absorbing the Rain the Quagmire Sleeps �I lay in my dark room listening to the sounds of my family stirring, seeing the hall lights, knowing it is winter but I am still in my warm bed. a fog horn blows— the shivering gull stays put 60 �I lay here very very quiet, my being distilled into the sound and smell of raindrops. Gradually (the change registers on my closed eyelids) the wisps of light turn to bands of light, then to a screen of brownish-grey and finally to pale grey with tinges of what would have been yellow had it not been overcast. absorbing the rain the quagmire sleeps . . . steeps in the morning sun 61 �Like Thoreau, I too want to “live deliberately,” though I need a plan—a guiding principle. His striped-down life is never at a loss, as mine is this minute, for a focal point, a nimbus. windless day— dangling from a web a sliver of bark 62 �It is important to me not to be interrupted. I find that people try to tear me away by telling me things or calling my attention to something. They don’t understand that I’m aligning my inner self with a potential significant thing. Anything interrupts. The wrong book for example. I am only myself when I am reading. But I am not reading the book. The words of the book merely settle me into a place where I can read the gauge that tells me whether I can relax. beneath a layer of leaves in the pale light her plastron still 63 �I begin to study piano. My teacher’s room is musty with music piled everywhere, but I like this thin old man who crosses his legs and leans forward to instruct me. the boy dozes . . . perched on his fly rod a red admiral 64 �I take the bus to his studio located in a slum midway between downtown St. Louis and the Chase Hotel. When the hour is over I go downstairs and wait for my father on the dark corner. I am cold. Dirty-looking men dig cigarette butts out of sidewalk cracks with a satisfied look. I am invisible and concentrate on my father. My father takes a very long time. I have a funny feeling that he has forgotten. I wait an interminable amount of time. I lose my ability to even picture my father remembering. ducking under a leaf the insect . . . motionless in the downpour 65 �I Fully Accept the Beauty of an Elephant Eating a Boa Constrictor Being Mistaken for a Hat �Mrs. Gottlieb’s English class is very difficult to get into. Those who do form a powerful clique of ones who understand the shallow nature of the common (other class’s) way of perceiving things. When Mrs. Gottlieb gives a quiz—she asks a question out loud and we write down our answer—she asks the question in a manner that suggests her perfect awareness of how above such questions we are, but still one must ask. While I am deeply appreciative of this precious opportunity, it is agonizing to be questioned about my reading. My experience with a book is not the kind to prepare me with a raft of facts to cough up on demand. ceasing your croak— turning to stone beneath my examining eye 67 �Still reading (mainly for self-connection) every paragraph twice, I approach Mrs. Gottlieb after class to say that I have a question. Her eyes light up just as I had hoped, those eyes saying “Now here undoubtedly is a special one, a curious young mind,” and as they rest on me she requests that I return tomorrow as then she will have more time. I really don’t have a question. I fully accept the beauty of an elephant eating a boa-constrictor being mistaken for a hat at face value. In fact I could stay on the first page of The Little Prince forever, requiring nothing further from the universe or Saint-Exupery than its companionship. morning sun— dozing on a mat of reeds a baby snapper 68 �I present my contrived question. Her face drops. The expectancy in her eyes, her pride in me, her certainty that I would be a new disciple, all disappear in a flash. I instantly get that I am out. She has seen through my “scholasticism” and understands irrevocably that I’m a fraud. not hawks but wind— the branchless saplings dead 69 �Mrs. Farrer, on the other hand, (from whom Tennessee Williams received an F) spends most of her time rescuing her bra strap. She has little of interest to say and she herself is not interesting. August moon overflowing the jar with its wire-mesh mouth 70 �I look at my classmates, who sit quietly. Anne Kelly, for example, with her neat and pert composure. Her skin is clear, her amber hair flawless. Her green plaid skirt falls squarely over her knees, exposing her thin legs and smudgeless saddles. I think, “I bet her parents care about her.” I know there are people whose decisions are informed by a mysterious intelligence. I spot them by instinct. one pink-white egg nestled in the earth . . . the moon 71 �Gilded Yellow Bars �We drive to Parkmoor for dinner. My brother and sister and I are in the back seat. My mother is screaming at my father who is behind the wheel. My mother’s voice rises and she hits my father. The car swerves. I am rigid with fear. I keep expecting we’ll pull over, but my father says, “Roz, stop, stop it now” in a slightly elevated but calm voice, and amazingly she does stop. She retreats to her side of the front seat, crosses her arms and asks us to think about what we want to order in a voice that totally erases what just happened. My blood begins to flow and I am relieved to cooperate in this myth. She makes it easy because she completely snaps out of it. snow buries the leaf tips— watch 73 �While a family excursion is uncomfortable (phony), it is not as uncomfortable as her sudden rages (dangerous). No one ever refers to this incident. My father tells friends he got scratched by the cat. carnage over tiny bits of sun-dried shells wind and weather-beaten 74 �Again my mother and father are in the car with just me in the back seat. We pull up to the Tivoli Theater and my mother jumps out to get a closer look at the show times. My father watches her and then turns all the way around and faces me as if I am his best buddy. “Isn’t she beautiful!” he asks in a tone of voice that conveys the selectiveness of the people to whom he reveals this opinion. My eyes automatically follow my mother. I am surprised at the level of passion my father discloses and new vistas about their relationship open up to me. His frank admiration is an entirely new twist. gilded yellow bars— also gleaming in twilit waters a male’s eyes 75 �I hear a tap on my window. It is my father standing on a ladder pleading with me to let him in. I am about to let him in when I hear banging and screaming outside my locked bedroom door. “Don’t you let him in, don’t you dare let him in.” My father hears this too and says, “Come on Gail. Let me in.” My mother is still yelling and I know if I unlock the door, she’s capable of pushing my father’s ladder down and maybe killing him. silent snow silent house I stand in the moonlit doorway 76 �I Am Very, Very Old �The air is nippy, not warm as the lemon-colored light suggests. Wetness congregates on the cement slabs and looks like slush. another rainy day even the chrysanthemums droop 78 �I am aware of feeling old. I am fifteen but feel the heaviness of age—that my circumstance of being a high school teenager is wrong. straggling through the cloven ice— yellow floweret 79 �I am deeply humiliated at being presented as a teenager and frustrated with the impossibility of conveying why to an ordinary person. My mother, for example, doesn’t understand. I don’t either really. I just know that I am very, very old. sweeping brittle leaves the sadness of autumn wind 80 �I walk to the Loop and watch old ladies eat. The cafeteria is drab but I am aware of the fact that these women understand how their plain meal falls into the scheme of things. I don’t have a scheme of things. I am envious as I watch them seated primly in their hats. downpour: the old woman spread out in front of her t.v. 81 �I don’t understand my needs. They are so large and so ageinappropriate that I feel stranded, cut off even from the possibility of getting them met. Midsummer night: the feverish man frets over his little boy of years ago 82 �Smack of a Jaw, Slap of a Tail �I sit at my desk and feel hungry. It is after school and there is an hour and a half before dinner. I am not interested in my homework. This is tangible. Whereas Andy, for example, approaches his subjects with a breadth of vision that immediately accepts any new item of information, refurnishing the vision so that room is made for this or that fact, I intrinsically balk at anything not vitalized by my heart. Information is intrusive. I can’t think. I don’t want to think. I want to be left alone to catch the few sporadic happenings that are in accord with me. between the cries of a black-crowned night heron— the sound of unseen birds 84 �I want to eat alone. Or not eat. I become aware, through off-hand comments made by Susie Rothman, of dieting, a totally new concept. She, who is perfect, claims she is fat. I notice she always brings her lunch now and it is calibrated to make her thinner. What she brings seems pathetically little but I begin to calculate. I bring an apple for lunch and at dinner I manage to find an excuse to leave the table before finishing my meal. No one notices. still drinking the phlox beneath my net . . . a swallowtail 85 �When I eat alone I have quiet (often total silence—everyone is asleep), I am tired (at the end of a long day—I feel I have “earned” eating and I’m ready to enjoy it), I am reading (taking the edge off my inner chaos), and often in bed (warm, comfortable, safe). I have everything I want in an endless supply. If the real world is too intolerable, I change it, create my own “fantastic” setting. bowing over the frog’s grave— cherry blossoms 86 �I lose weight. I severely measure my food and notice that my clothing hangs on me. The waists on my skirts are way too big. Now I mostly wear one of two navy blue ones. This is very simple and with my dark hair and thin body I feel graceful and in control. springtime: nubbed with buds the slender plum 87 �My clothes need to be quite simple, I realize, or else they overwhelm me (make a larger statement than I make). To stay larger than my clothes I need (1) to limit them in number (2) to clearly define them (to prevent them from defining me) and (3) to monitor my relation to my body so that I experience this connection intensely, rendering clothes insignificant by comparison. When my clothing hangs on me, their position as appendage is exaggerated. The statement is, “See, I can do without you. You are mere coverings to me who is the important fact.” I need to do this because it’s easy for me to begin thinking my clothes are more important. My mother thinks they are. She is much more concerned about my clothing and makeup than she is about me. chiseling your limbs your leaves . . . the hollow wind 88 �My mother says if I don’t wear lipstick, I can’t go places with her. I feel messy when I wear lipstick. It’s always coming off and I have constantly to worry about freshly applying it. It takes over my face, whereas I want my own face. I am hurt that my mother doesn’t. smack of a jaw slap of a tail . . . silence 89 �I am reading in my green chair. My mother comes in to say something to me but instead looks at me and begins screaming, “Look at you. Look how thin you are. Look at this” and she grabs my pencil-thin wrist in disgust. I say, “I’m fine, Mother. I’m not that thin. I feel fine,” but inside I fear her. Deep down I know I don’t have a leg to stand on because while I am much too thin, I need it to be this way. My life depends on my ability to keep it exactly this way. more strikes and afterwards . . . swirling pondweed 90 �In the Barber’s Pole Gyrating �Summer days are long. I sleep late then lounge on the beach. The friends I have all have jobs (belong to something), which underscores my nonbelonging. I am sensitive to this on the one hand and am to some extent embarrassed by the ultimacy of my availability. On the other, there is a relieving honesty about it, nonbelonging being such a reality for me. whirling with the tide in the shallow’s flattened stubble 92 �When Danny visits me he hunches over as if apologizing for being visible. Ordinarily he flanks himself with a moderatesized protective system: first, his buddies in Delray, then his fraternity at college, then his “class” at medical school, and finally his circle of elitist friends at the University of Chicago. In each case the groups are delineated, know him well, and function as an extended family. Each exerts a value structure and behavior code providing a context, a kind of ersatz self-reference. Like a musician playing with a band, his own voice, while distinctive, is mellowed out, augmented, and in the end enriched and strengthened by the presence of others—the solution of an extrovert. wading in the pool long black legs—and more— long black legs 93 �Danny has said he will write to me during the winter, but makes it clear that he will not write love letters. Wanting his letters on any terms, I acquiesce. A letter from Danny means “Dear Gail Sher” followed by the weather followed by newsreel. Interspersed are witticisms or turns-of-phrase that say everything about his caliber, his sense of timing, his gentle eye and funniness. In his hands everything (me?) is viewpoint which becomes objectified (articulated), thereby enlivened. muscle-shirt, spiked orange hair in the barber’s pole gyrating 94 �Indeed he writes to me every week, which is really like writing to me every day because every day the reality of a possible letter from Danny dawns on me as I enter my house and either consumes me if there is one or fills me with hope and rationalizations if there isn’t. Coming home from school means coming home to a letter from Danny not yet manifested or a letter from Danny in a blue envelope with “Miss Gail Sher” written in his tiny intelligent hand. winter sun— pale wings flutter about the woodpile 95 �I have so internalized Danny (my projections onto him) that I understand myself only insofar as I make sense in his eyes. giant redwood: storing the sunset in your luminous trunk 96 �A Trefoil for St. Patrick �One day I get the idea (probably from my mother) that it would be nice to invite Danny over for dinner. Until now we have either gone to a movie, for a walk by the ocean, or (my favorite) a moonlight swim. Occasionally, if we are with his gang, we play volley ball on the beach or hang out somewhere. My asking him over for dinner thus is quite a departure 1) in kind of activity and 2) in my being the initiator. summer fades— a patch of seaside daisies waves in the salty air 98 �I put my entire soul into the planning and preparation of this meal. I know it means Danny’s first insight into domestic (wifely?) me. To be safe I choose something extremely simple (hamburgers) to make. Everything is ready when first Danny is late and then the phone rings and Danny says (to my mother) that he is on a friend’s boat and can’t get back, he’ll have to come another time. I immediately have a fantasy of Danny on some luxury boat, suavely dressed, suavely flirting with many suave (sexually sophisticated) women, far away (since he can’t get back) from incapable me. Suddenly it all feels very wrong. Inviting him, pretending I can cook (the hamburgers seem ridiculous), pretending I can in any way satisfy him. minnow in its beak young crane stops in the rippling bog 99 �Both relationships and intellectual pursuits have failed to anchor me in such a way as to promote a true connection, one that requires loyalty for example. I feel loyal. I feel in fact that I am too loyal, that my desire to be devoted to something flails around, latching arbitrarily onto this laundromat or that hair stylist so that I can’t help but notice the inappropriateness. twinkling sky— bouncing on her bosom a trefoil for St. Patrick 100 �Since Thanksgiving Danny has not written and when I get to town at Christmas he tells me he won’t be able to see me much (very ambiguous). It is the end of the evening and we are standing as if we were going to kiss but instead he tells me this, very softly. night falls shadows under fluttering wings 101 �My feelings of desolation are all jumbled up with feelings of disgust upon seeing my father sitting in the living room with his testicles bulging out of his bathing suit. He (my father) is wrong here and now “here” feels terribly wrong. sliced by the squall wings litter the dirty sand 102 �Danny is seeing Lorna. The whole town is aware of this since Danny is being very ostentatious about it. The picture of Danny heatedly pursuing anyone makes his little proclamation to me (which carries the implication of “circumstances beyond his control”) forced and silly. Here is a world that excludes me so thoroughly I am surprised he remembers me enough to make an excuse. “Crook, Crook!” he cries then ceases abruptly when it’s over 103 �yayoi the time of germination �Vapor Rising Over Just-Stirring Birds �Mrs. Mahaffey, flabby, scattered but good-natured, owns a cardboard box, two of whose rooms she lets to University of Florida students. Linda has one. She is a first-year graduate, sweet, uncomplicated, generously giving of her time to help with the perpetual stream of crises emanating from Mrs. Mahaffey or one of her two kids. “They did lose their father less than a year ago,” Mrs. Mahaffey, teary-eyed, reminds us day after day. summer wanes . . . on the windy tableland the sough of whistling wheat 106 �My tiny room is next to Linda’s tiny room and kittycorner from the bathroom. What stands out for me, however, is neither the crampness nor the shabbiness so much as the possession of a piece of land. Never mind its size and dilapidation. I have a bed, a chair, a record player, a closet—everything I need. monarch: its soft whir in the mountain air 107 �Linda helps Mrs. Mahaffey cook and joins the three of them for dinner and sometimes breakfast. I am not interested. I am interested in undistractedly pursuing literature and music or, more accurately, to anchor my need to devote myself to something. This need rules the gamut of my decisions from professional development to shaving cream. If I can latch onto something, I am quieted. At least a part of me is. The other part, lost in an incomprehensible sea of confusion, aimlessly treads through day after day. There is almost a poignancy in the futility of my efforts, which I do not see—neither the poignancy nor the futility. male on nest— his cry in the rising meltwater 108 �I ride my bike to the student cafeteria. The staff is still getting organized and the few other students silently absorbed. I feel very “alone in the presence of others,” as if all those with the same preference for early morning make up a family of sorts, that this is tacitly acknowledged, and we all agree to ignore each other. It feels like a little club—to me—because I need to belong to something. The cafeteria is warm. There is food, light, and the sense of people preparing things for me. daybreak— vapor rising over just-stirring birds 109 �During the day I do what I can but I don’t entirely understand the nature of my energy cycles and waste a lot of time. Though I go to an eight o’clock class, from nine to twelve I am dizzy and ungrounded. At noon I eat lunch, attend an afternoon lecture, and run errands. By five the day that had dawned so promisingly has seen not only nothing remarkable but almost nothing at all. lowering sun . . . a few red leaves blaze in the flaccid grass 110 �The Slender Stem—Flowerless �I say I want to study literature but really I want a home. Books do it. The problem is only certain books, a fraction of the ones required for an English major. Those that don’t, don’t—“it” being grip me in a way that immerses me despite my mind. Because my mind is not available. It has the full-time job of managing the fact that I do not feel seen or loved for who I am. pale, grey the slender stem— flowerless 112 �Plus I have larger questions about my intellectual capabilities. If I don’t have a “fine mind” does that mean I’m a worthless person? staring at the second egg tawny chick— still 113 �In one class I am required to write a paper. I have no idea what to write and am foreign even to the concept of critical thinking. Shortly before the paper is due I stumble upon the phrase “dialectical materialism.” My mind cannot fathom the real meaning of this term but the words themselves strike my fancy. I enjoy the sense of their elusiveness. The a’s, i’s, and l’s are clear and bell-like (as in my name). cold snap: riding a tailwind a male skipper 114 �I allow the fact that I don’t know what I’m talking about to become secondary to the fact that I use this expression in many sentences. I make some valid points having to do with side issues. When I turn the paper in, my sense of satisfaction is undermined slightly by fear . . . of fraudulence, of not knowing what I represent myself as knowing, of being found inadequate, or worse, untalented. more than wind more than cold rustles through the stiffening reeds 115 �On Hunter’s Soil �I feel snug in my airy room in a twenties wood-frame house, very Evanston: sheer breezy curtains, rocking chair, desk, bed, and throw rug. I sit in the rocking chair and look out the window. I read in bed. But I only feel contained when I am eating. scattered seeds— on hunter’s soil a crane 117 �I get up and walk several blocks to the campus cafeteria. Its wooden booths enclose me in my world of books, which I ingest along with donuts—very intent. I feel alive, thoughtful, capable of knowing whatever it is I need to know. Maybe I read five pages. vigorous air, hard bright sun flood my window— rousing me 118 �When I get to class I am overly conscious—thinking “Here I am in the class”—as if this were the important thing. Because I can’t be in the class (my psychic energy is inextricably bound up in quite different matters) I can only have a sense of how it would be if I could. A phantom student, I proceed through the day, returning to myself, refurbishing myself, encouraging, cheering on my ghost-act (and stifling any inklings of awareness to this effect) at mealtimes. darker colder each day arcing lower 119 �No one from Northwestern lives in my part of town. I live illegally, unaffiliated. If discovered I would be expelled. her solo pierces the winter sky 120 �In one course there is a woman who always sits in back. She is fat and looks uncomfortable in her body. I stare at her. I feel a bond, a deep connection . . . probably because my situation too is out of control. cold air sinks—the hollows a black network of bare elm 121 �I begin to eat compulsively. I read and eat candy bars after which I feel starving. I eat grilled cheese sandwiches. I feel cluttered and weighed down. I know I don’t have a grip on my eating but, lonely and afraid, I feel increasingly compelled to eat in a destructive way. Food renders me unconscious, as my eyes scan the unintelligible lines of The Faerie Queen and page upon page of pre-Renaissance drama. mosquitoes mosquito-flies . . . bloat the stagnant water 122 �My pattern is to read, worry over the material, and make straight C’s. Most of the exams are three-hour essays. My mind goes blank as soon as I read the question. breathless, the trekker stops places another stone atop the icon’s little pyramid 123 �One day it occurs to me to write my “answer” before I arrive at the test. I figure the teacher basically wants to see if we have a consistent, supportable thesis. I can’t come up with one under pressure but, using my imagination, I can think up one that will match a likely exam question. So I do. Instead of rereading plays with hopeless inattention, I develop an argument and organize an essay and even take notes inside the cover of my bluebook. These notes represent the sum total of all my knowledge. When I get to the test, whatever the question is, I relate it to my answer. From now on I get all A’s. The teacher is always amazed at how cleverly I weave in something he hadn’t quite expected. now after they’re gone . . . their ceaseless cries 124 �Abode of Snow �The soft plucking of a banjo awakens me. Peeking through the venetian blinds I watch both sky and land gradually redden even while being glossed in a coat of white. tall and still the shadow of a deer in the moon-drenched pines 126 �Wind-driven snow rattles the glass. As each flake strikes, instead of melting and dribbling down in a little rivulet, it adheres to a layer of frost that is forming on the windowpane. Treetops, gabled roofs and rolling lawns relax under a blanket of softness. drifting then dissolving . . . delicate snowflake 127 �Snowflakes twirl through the air, coming to rest on my cheeks, and nose and mouth. Unlike rain, or even drizzle, which angles steadily downward, snowflakes ramble, drifting from the sky. wind-driven snow and you—oh white bird bouncing, leaping treading air in the squall 128 �Along with memories . . . fat glass bottles huddled under a collar of white, the tabbed bottle-tops and pleated caps crisply hugging each neck—(I’d jimmy open the door, grab the bottles by their throats and lug them inside two at a time) . . . her breath stops— the frozen moor covered with night 129 �Powdery snow has already reconfigured the little trail carved by my boots. I tilt my head and open my mouth to taste some of the icy flakes, then shut my eyes the better to exude my consciousness into the random bits that startle me. moonlight: your carmine glow among the saplings 130 �A usually-muddy footpath drops down to the lake. Snow melds the path and the surrounding property so that there is only one expanse of virgin hill broken by an occasional house or tree. The lake itself looks like a meadow. pine needles laced with snow— between their clusters your departing V 131 �Fingering the Parched Riverbed �I love the words of Chaucer. Every line is packed, I feel, with energy, poignancy, an undertone of double-meaning—restrained yet exuberant. I want to hold each word, to cherish and sink into each word. fingering the parched riverbed trickles . . . then rivulets . . . 133 �The nature of middle English, guttural, dignified, lofty, though innocent in its primitive development, moves me to the core. I read The Parliament of Fowls and Troilus and Criseyde. I read Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain & the Green Knight. The details of an allegory for me are not the point. The way the thing is said, not the thing itself, is what is important. funeral over . . . down frozen cheeks driblets of rain 134 �It is increasingly obvious that I cannot perform the feats of the average graduate student. There is a sense of impending doom— it is just a matter of time before the cumulative effect of my inabilities become decisive. I sit on my Berkeley couch, book in lap, and stare into the fire. dusk— a small green bird flits to another branch of the seedling 135 �Your Rattling Wings �I have on a plain, navy blue woolen smock. I have my very long hair and intense interest in the texts we are going to study. Arthur claims that when he first saw me seated across the seminar table, he went home, decided to marry me, then asked me out for coffee. I probably looked the picture of promise. on a tuft of moss near a flowering cranberry eggtooth intact . . . 137 �We are given a booth for two. I am glad to be here though I am not interested in Arthur. “It’s okay to be doing this even if you don’t care for him,” I tell myself. In fact there is something exciting (almost dangerous) in behaving the way a normal person would. I order a hamburger and salad (which I know will make me bloated and soggy, ruining my energy for the rest of the day). Arthur is simply using the means at his disposal to get to know me. But I am not I outside of my “environments.” I am definitely not I eating non-I foods. (At the time I don’t have any of this figured out.) across her nest’s sandy ridge dragging her spiked inch-long tail 138 �I feel radiant, stimulated, charmingly present. I’m sure I succeed in further intriguing Arthur who is there because he really cares. I am there for the exhilarating experience of pretending for an hour that I could possibly be the person he has in mind. despite a fever reading the sutrā in the rainy dawn 139 �Arthur lives alone. His “bungalow” of ivy-covered cobblestone has a fireplace, marble floors, and medieval door. The seven dwarfs might have lived there. It is in a court of ten to twelve similar bungalows facing each other instead of the street so that from the street one sees a little path of stepping stones leading—it is unclear where. dusk at the canyon’s lip pauses 140 �Inside he has a painting. There is a moon with some colorful figures by a Mexican artist. Arthur knows that the University library loans certain works of art that they lack room to display. He gets in line at 6:00 the previous night and sleeps in line so that at 8:00 a.m. he has first choice. I am deeply moved by the painting. I am deeply moved at Arthur’s passionate act to acquire it. Arthur seems so clear about what he wants. And, I think, what he wants is exceedingly fine. landing on a spear of rush bending the rush— your rattling wings 141 �Fast Asleep in the Silver Birch �Our cozy apartment with its high ceilings and bay window feels lavish. One wall holds a library. Two are covered with burlap drapes whose pinkness enhances the pinkness in a Gauguin print. I never feel alone. Whenever I am here I feel amalgamated. burning off the morning haze a sunbeam spots the tip of her nostrils 143 �Our favorite place is a Japanese home-style restaurant called the “Hou-Kou.” It feels very quaint and restful sitting here before a curtained window, hearing plucky oriental music and being served a meal that we semi-cook ourselves. A hou-kou is a tiny cauldron with a lid and its own little burner. The owners of the restaurant light it, fill it with shiny noodles and a delicious broth, and bring us a large platter of carefully chopped vegetables, fish, tofu, and so on, which we briskly dip with our chopsticks into the simmering liquid. circling the cove immense blue wings stir the stagnant ether 144 �I eat my meals at an oaken table with straw placemats and dark blue crockery. I rest in my Morris chair. Surrounded by books, rich textures, colorful paintings, thoughtfully prepared food, I am trying out a person I can possibly be. But it is too laid out for me. I am me because of a concept of my mother’s. (This is unconscious.) So nourished am I by the vibrations of this fantasy, that I think (I actually believe) I am me. twilight . . . fast asleep in the silver birch 145 �BOOK TWO Plains �uz uki the moon of deutzia flowers �Monotony, Both Lugubrious and Strangely Crisp �The first moment I enter a zendo it feels right. I have hardly heard of zazan but as the sun rises and I chant the Robe Chant, this gesture feels correct. The same sense—almost a nostalgia— comes over me at teishō. Katagiri-sensei’s words grab my being as if gently shaking and then opening it. This is real. This is so. And while the effort Zen practice requires seems almost beyond my capabilities, the freshness, the certainty of inner knowing, compels me again and again to greet the dawn with a straight back. home at last— I sleep numbed by rain 149 �The room is dark and fragrant. People are getting settled, plumping their cushions, and swaying back and forth. Seated along a far wall, I quickly become absorbed in the vibration of bells and silence reverberating into one another. one plum falls a warbler’s screech in the distance 150 �Meals, finally, bring warmth. It is clear food, straightforward food I respect. Then more sitting, a lecture, tea with a surprise sweet. I find the rhythm akin to me. The monotony, both lugubrious and strangely crisp, washes over my being, very familiar. moonrise— a silhouette drifts along the inlet 151 �Still, I can’t adjust, get comfortable, find the right posture. The day takes forever. Its elegance, which describes a frank and beautiful way to be, becomes an injunction by sheer force of its multileveled presence. I find myself acquiescing, agreeing almost as an aesthetic response. But I am cold and scared. Actually the Buddha (the Tathāgatha) often appeals to this bony migrant aspect of his disciples. a shorebird cries— across the dunes the hollow rattle of wind 152 �Dark Wet Mud �People sleep. All but a doan who lights the lanterns and then stomps through camp ringing the wake-up bell at 3:20 precisely. Thump thump thump. The fact that the bell is hand-held, handrung (a human being is running, swiftly, steadily) softens the effect of its clangorous sound. Suzuki-roshi says, “When the wake-up bell rings, get up. Never make a decision twice.” I snuggle more deeply into my sleeping bag. silence . . . but for buntings twittering in the sedge 154 �My mother is dying. She is lying beside a swimming pool in a down sleeping bag. I bend to pick her up (she is so light, so light). “Oh mother, don’t leave!” Christmas: our lawn solid white 155 �The effort that it takes to get up, wash, dress, walk through the rain to the zendo, seems out of proportion to the accomplishment. Lonely, tired, cold, knowing exactly why I do this, I wonder why I do this. kerplunck— scurrying through the grass then plopping in the water 156 �Monastic life has been known to me forever. I am back now and the simultaneous feelings of freshness and familiarity pass over me in waves. home at last not a single leaf on the crooked tree 157 �I am given a room with two “older” students in the barn. Indeed with their altar, scrolls and vases of flowers they seem delightfully snug. I have no possessions. This is an appealing concept and represents a shift for me, but I can’t relax. no ducks, no geese just snow on the frozen lake 158 �My drab corner mortifies me. I have nothing to soften its impersonal coarseness so I end up with no place of refuge, no solacing activity. Before I arrived, I had my rocking chair, my books, my harpsichord. I had food I chose myself, I had a companion, I had the presiding thought of devoting my life to music and literature. Now I have the stricture, “Everything I own I carry in my backpack.” traipsing in my getas down the rain-drenched path a single squawk through the darkening morning air 159 �The barn is at the outer limits of the monastery grounds. It bothers me that I have to walk so far in my unsteady shoes on the unsteady path, sometimes in the rain, often in the dark. People who live in the dorm, I think, get to hop next door, whereas I have to trudge my way gropingly, clumsily, allowing an extra fifteen minutes. I see this as significant. It falls to me to work harder, to have to get up earlier, to arrive with my shoes caked with mud or soaked with rain—and to have all this unacknowledged. afterwards what’s left of her tears— dark wet mud 160 �For Our Sakes the Clams and Fish Give Themselves Unselfishly �Morning zazen ends. The bell rings (the shijō once) announcing the transition to morning service. We place our rakusus on our heads, chant the Robe Chant, let down our rakusus, then fluff our cushions and line up in the aisles for prostrations. After the bowing we reseat ourselves, this time in seiza facing the altar. Thump thump thump thump. A loud keisu punctuates the mokugyō’s steady beat. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, practicing deeply Prajña Parāmitā, Clearly saw that all five skandhas are empty, transforming anguish and distress. 162 �As morning service concludes, the head server strikes the umpan announcing breakfast. Zendo students return to their cushions, this time facing out. Buddha, born at Kapilavastu, attained the Way at Magadha, preached at Vārānashi, entered Nirvana at Kushinagara. 163 �A roll down on the taikō (Great Drum) begins, slowly at first, while the head server approaches the altar, tray (containing three tiny bowls with the three foods we will be eating) held high. The drum roll picks up speed as she nears the dais, gains even more momentum as she ascends its few stairs, and peaks as she bows and offers the tray to the Buddha. She bows again and retraces her steps according to which (her relative distance from the alter) the drummer calibrates the intensity of his beat. It is downy at the end, a hum before the final boom. Then the Roshi is served while a team of servers approach the students by twos. Now as we spread the bowls of the Buddha Tathāgatha we make our vows together with all beings; we and this food and our eating are vacant. 164 �Chanting continues while the servers serve. With pot at eye level a server bows between the first two students, kneels and begins scooping food into the first person’s Buddha bowl (the largest of the three nested ōryōki bowls). A slight lift of the student’s upraised left hand (her right hand holds her bowl) signals the server to stop. The server serves the second person, then stands and bows again between the two as they, bowls raised to eye level, bow in return. This procedure is repeated until everyone has food in all three bowls. First, we consider in detail the merit of this food and remember how it came to us; second, we evaluate our own virtue and practice, lacking or complete, as we receive this offering; third, we are careful about greed, hatred and ignorance, to guard our minds and to free ourselves from error; 165 �Reciting the sutra forces us to incorporate (“take in”) the tremendous significance of ingesting another being, transmuting its nature into actions that we deem worthwhile. “For our sakes the clams and fish give themselves unselfishly!” fourth, we take this good medicine to save our bodies from emaciation; fifth, we accept this food to achieve the Way of the Buddha. 166 �The words bore into my heart as I, Buddha bowl cradled in my raised fingers (the thumb and two fingers from each hand create a miniature platform), intone them along with everyone. The privilege of being here, being served with others, the enormous unlikelihood of this opportunity given the millions of lifetimes of multifarious effort needed to create it, overwhelm me. I am filled with awe, and respect, for myself and all sentient beings whose combined consciousness make this rare moment possible. Bashō with ears so finely tuned how could you miss the screams of the chestnut moonlight the sound of the burrowing worm 167 �Two minutes ago I was harping (mentally) on how tedious and unnecessarily dragged out our meal ritual is. Day after day the same motions, the same sounds, the same sort of food. “Just let me eat my peanut-butter sandwich in peace” (I rail on inwardly). The opening words of the sutrā jolt me back to the state of mind that originally brought me to this monastery. I chant them with relief. Thank God (I say in my un-Buddhist manner) I had the sense to place myself in circumstances that would oblige at least my body and mouth to act with wisdom. Were it not for the help of this community, I would be munching on my peanut-butter sandwich full of desire and confusion. one bolt searing the landscape white 168 �The shift is instant. Gratitude wells in mid-sentence. Yes. After all, this is the correct understanding. It did take innumerable labors to bring me this food. I should know how it comes to me. moon-viewing kinhin gazing with one face at the dark Halloween sky 169 �Oh, All You Hungry Ghosts �Chanting ends. Eating begins. First with the contents of the Buddha bowl, the centerpiece of the meal. Items from the second and third bowls are interspersed as condiments. One picks up the bowl from which one is intending to eat, takes a bite, chews the food, then replaces the bowl before picking up the bowl containing the food destined for the next bite. from blade to blade picking seeds from the toppled reedgrass 171 �Food. A monastic preoccupation. The emotional part of eating goes haywire. Many are new to a vegetarian diet. However much the tenzo (head cook) might wish to placate the zendo students with a baked potato in the Buddha bowl, how is she going to manage the sour cream, butter, chives or bacon bits that westerners expect with it—(condiments are awkward to serve in an ōryōki-style meal)? Unlike the Japanese, for whom such foods have an almost spiritual significance, Americans are not satisfied with polished rice and umeboshi plum. Tofu is not steak. chicks shrieking in the predawn light . . . o mother swallow 172 �Eating is deliberate. Each dish features its own flavors and textures unlike the western style of piling onto one flat plate several foods that blend into each other. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas and gravy are one gestalt, not four. summer evening— kneeling in the garden picking tomatoes 173 �At the end of the meal hot water is served. We wash our empty bowls and drink most of what now is a very thin broth. The small amount left is dumped into a bucket with which the kitchen staff, as their last act, waters a tree or plant. snarling her stout little body rips the leaf to shreds— strolls to her dish of water laps it up 174 �Not only do we, the eaters, leave no tracks (our ōryōkis are reassembled, tied and replaced beside our zabutan—there are no “dishes”), but every shred of food has been used to sustain life. Leftovers in the serving pots are rehashed into the evening’s gruel. Not a scrap is wasted. one bug one mouth snap! 175 �I Dedicate this Stone �Morning ends abruptly. Noon service, preceded by the noon bell’s mysterious reminder, is more amalgamated into the flesh of the day than morning or evening service. Students hastily throw on their robes over their work clothes, splash their faces with water (they always seem half washed, half sweaty) and just make it to the zendo. I dedicate this stone to the soul of the fetus of the mother whale I harpooned 177 �We open our bowls and chant. Then we eat in silence. Broken here and there by a click-click of spoon against bowl (though we try to pay attention to the way we eat so that the noise of eating does not disturb another person’s concentration). drizzly morning a child’s voice above the surf 178 �Somehow lunch-silence is a more surface silence than the silence at breakfast. When lunch is over (before we even leave the zendo) people’s minds, as registered in their postures, have already moved on to something else. after-meal lull— sun sparkles off an unwatched overhead screen 179 �It is hard to stay with eating. Though strictly forbidden (during a meal one is supposed to lower one’s gaze as in zazen and focus on the numerous aspects of meal protocol—taking the right amount of food, chewing carefully, finishing every drop, tasting the flavors, appreciating the aesthetics, feeling the appropriate gratitude and vowing to use the energy in such a way as to redeem the life of the sentient beings sacrificed on one’s behalf), still one’s unruly mind wanders to this and that and especially to the eating bowls of those across the aisle. How many succeed in chewing their rice, each bite fifty times, relishing the varying nuances of flavor extracted with diminishing potency as one approaches the thirties and forties? How many chew their food at all? Most of us gulp it down. muddy brook broad-veined river the ocean’s mouth—stuffed 180 �Dinner in the zendo is a different matter altogether. Traditionally in Buddhist monasteries monks refrain from eating after noon. Our custom of restricting the evening meal to two bowls (instead of three) is an acknowledgment of the traditional way.2 Dinner (not a true “meal”) is gruel (the day’s leftovers plus a grain—the leftovers from that become “gruel bread”) and a vegetable. The ritual is shortened, chanting eliminated. Just clappers and silent eating. Anyway, practically everyone has a stash of Oreos in his room. hopping through the hole too small for the starling a bluebird peers out 1 2 Originally, Buddhist wayfarers ate only in the early morning and at noon, and this practice continues in southern Buddhism. When the religion moved to a colder climate, a supper in the evening was added. However, out of deference to tradition, it was called the “medicine stone” and consisted only of leftovers. 181 �s atsuki the moon of transplanting �Tree Frogs—Their Rubbery Croak �After tangaryo I’m assigned to the garden. The head gardener takes me on a guided tour of the upper and lower gardens explaining how planting, composting, weeding, and general maintenance are done. I try to grasp what she is saying, but I end up listening to her—to the quality of her presence, her probable history. I find I’m a little in love with her. your sunny face perched atop a six-foot stalk along the headland’s rill 184 �Eventually she leaves. I am alone in the upper garden, which is spotless. I am squatting, digging up burdock root. While I understand that the activity of digging burdock root just now, here, is the zenith of civilized behavior, I am losing energy rapidly. My aching back, my aching knees, the mosquitoes, the boredom . . . I cannot squat another second. I bend over instead and quickly exhaust that alternative. I panic. Less than an hour has gone by. dusk— daylight lingers in the suddenly-chill air 185 �I don’t make any friends. The kitchen, where I eventually end up, adheres to its own separate schedule. There are people I admire and want to get to know, but they seem inaccessible, selfcontained, following a private inner, as well as outer, program. the storm breaks— one hermit crab scuttles through the undertow 186 �The Tassajara zendo kitchen is staffed with headstrong individuals: Alan, a huge person whose high-spirited presence overpowers the room; Roovane, intensely philosophical, idealistic, and principled; Donny, lithe and powerful with a deep, wild energy; and Paul, sincere but stiff and fussy about rules. I constantly have the feeling that I’m doing the wrong thing. oncoming storm— thunderous ghosts patrol the horizon 187 �There may have been a second woman, I can’t recall. Wait. I do remember. It is Lucille, an older woman, an artist. Lucille and I are often told to wash lettuce. We carry towels and buckets to the porch by the creek. Lucille gabs until one of the men stares her down. As soon as they leave she yaks away as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. steamy morning lulling me to sleep—tree frogs— their rubbery croak 188 �Alan, Roovane and Donny—the triumvirate. Customarily there is one tenzo and others do what they are told. Alan may have been tenzo but my predominant impression is of the three together (arguing) over trivia. day in, day out bull frogs and the echo of bull frogs 189 �The Seedling Draped in Moonlight �Kitchen work I understand. It is indoors (warm), task-oriented and private, as opposed to say cleaning guest cabins, which is indoors and task-oriented but not at all private (it is more efficient to work in teams and the guests require attention), or the garden, which is task-oriented and private but outdoors (where my hands stiffen). Other jobs, like keeper of the baths or guest-season manager, are not sufficiently labor-intensive (to contain my anxiety and make me feel cleansed). dusk— wincing, the old lady swallows her medicine 191 �The majority of the kitchen staff, now my exclusive eating partners, are rigid and somewhat puritanical macrobiotics, though they disguise these qualities (make them harder to confront) by their conviviality. My eating practices, the quantities I accept and so forth, are subject to much observation and remark. If I take a little too much salad (usually made with tomatoes and dressing—very yin), or am lax about chewing every bite of rice, the wrongness of my behavior is conveyed to me. Eating becomes petrifying. Grains are the only food about which I feel fairly safe. Grains, however, do not fill me. spouting offshore along the bluff gigantic hulks breach— flukes slap the water 192 �Also there is a time factor. The “kitchen” eats together. We chant at the time for chant, eat after the clappers indicate “begin,” and wash our bowls in unison. I can’t get enough. foraging the lagoon a hatchling choked by weeds 193 �I grow thinner. At first I am glad. Some months earlier I had tried to lose weight. For a brief time my energy peaks. Then the incredible heat, flies, intense schedule, and, perhaps most important for me, the lack of a kindred spirit, prevail. brown leaves shrivel— pock-marked fruit fail to ripen in the weak October sun 194 �I lay on my futon under the trees, under the sky, lulled to sleep by the water. I am emaciated, exhausted. I sleep a week. washed by rain the seedling . . . draped in moonlight 195 �Roovane visits me. I am finished sleeping but still too weak to move around. It’s afternoon and I am hot so I unzip my sleeping bag and drag out my legs. I do feel cooler but I notice I’m wearing only underpants and a t-shirt. I make one of those mental shifts allowing myself to be exposed like this. Roovane is my brother, I tell myself. He seizes the opportunity to school me on the subject of shaving. He launches into a discourse on body hair, its naturalness and that I should allow myself to have this. It’s a moral thing. dusk— lilies nod in the shallow water 196 �Suzuki-roshi is just here, joyful and simple like a boy. So long as he is present, I cannot die. At the very end of summer during our Shosan Ceremony, a formal ceremony during which each student presents her understanding in the form of a question, I ask, “When I awoke from my illness I saw the first red autumn leaves. Is that zazen?” Suzuki-roshi smiles warmly. I feel cleansed. My whole being shines. the afternoon purrs stroked by soft summery light 197 �Deer-Chewed Tips �On calendar days with a four or nine the schedule is relaxed which means fewer zendo activities and no work at all. The entire central portion of the day becomes personal time. I get very excited. My question (who am I?) can be addressed on a less ultimate level. Frankly, I am more interested in this less ultimate level because my efforts don’t sink into such a bottomless pit. fallout: I kneel to pick up the shards 199 �I decide to carve my own eating utensils. The metal spoon that comes with the ōryōki and the sterile Chinese-restaurant style chopsticks lack class (in my opinion). The chopsticks, though less inharmonious (at least they are wood), are clearly massproduced. I want the implements of my meal practice not only to be gorgeous but carefully and thoughtfully crafted so as to honor the attention and care that go into providing me with daily sustenance. clear blue sky warm winds crook the deeply yellow flower heads 200 �I choose madrone, a soft (stunning) local wood. I sit on my doorstep and gouge out a bowl and approximate a stem that is comfortable in my hands. I go as far as I can with the gouge, then switch to a file, then sandpaper. What starts as coarse, gradually becomes smooth, each gradient of paper having its concomitant effect upon the spoon’s surface. I cannot help but see the graceful shape that emerges from a stick (having been gouged, filed, sanded) as a metaphor for what is happening to me right now at this monastery. the swamp—its musty smell— airs in the crisp March wind 201 �The spoon is implicit in the tree limb. Mismanaging any part of the transformation process (drying and fumigating the wood, storing it to prevent warping, planing, sawing, filing, polishing and buffing the finished surface) can detract from its ultimate beauty. Someone might stain it and violate the nature of the madrone’s inner radiance. upside down caked with mud . . . a tortoise’s sun-bleached bones 202 �I relish my project. Whereas I am not able to control the weather, the schedule, the long hours of zazen, I can easily control these few tools. summer afternoon— only my pedaling disturbs the silence 203 �I make my chopsticks both thicker at the handle and pointier at the tip than the commercial ones. I want them to be daring (almost sexy) precision instruments. And for good reason. With the chanting and extensive ritual that surround our zendo meals, I can’t be wasting precious minutes chasing slippery goban (rice). When I scoop up a bite, it needs to be a big bite so I can get on with the suimono (soup) and tsukemono (pickled vegetables) in the other two bowls. autumn leaf adrift in the pothole fingers spread wide 204 �I make the setsu eel-like, sleek and silky. It is light as a feather when I attach its linen tip. When hot water is poured into the Buddha bowl, the setsu is what scrapes off the grain stuck to its sides. The remaining grain-water is transferred to the second bowl where the setsu again is used to scrape off encrusted food. Most of this “broth” is drunk with just a small portion reserved as an offering at the meal’s end. Without the setsu one is helpless in the face of stickiness—the very nature of food in bowls. spring: sprouts from the deer-chewed tips 205 �The Pudgy Moon �A familiar feeling comes over me on a summer afternoon in the heat, with the flies. I have already done the work I am clear about. There are other things to do, like scrubbing pots and washing floors, but I have no will. My mind goes blank. I fill the bucket with sudsy water and wring out the mop. My body feels dead. I wrench it anyway through the sweeping motions. tamping her nest she lumbers away— laden with dirt 207 �Harriet is here. With her delicate body, waist-long flaming red hair, and the strident immaculateness of her maintenance of these assets, it is as if she bloomed here, full-grown, without a history. broad-winged bird silhouette swaying in the noontide 208 �Harriet is sweet and amazingly successful at achieving Japanese standards of beauty. Her smallness permits her to be elaborate in a simple way. Tiny movements, sexy hair, little black flats—very prim yet eager. Harriet has real taste. Pulsating taste. teeny flowers— their fragrance in a shallow breeze 209 �I like Harriet and do not turn down her friendship. Intimate talk—a relic from the outside world—is normalizing. We go to the baths and pour over her romance. I immerse myself in the specifics, grateful for the reprieve. Her tales sparkle with fire. My own mediocrity and lack of strength evaporate for a moment. chestnut wings warming them in the morning sun 210 �Donny is attracted to me. I guess this though I feel awkward in his presence, as if all that I know from my life thus far has no place in his “belief system” (he would deny he has one). Therefore I am the one to be taught—he the teacher. He notices I shave my legs. Wrong. What do I do that for? I know nothing about macrobiotics, not just the food but the essential place on the scale of yin-yang of every single aspect of life. I know nothing about Zen or yoga or sex. My ignorance is astounding though I do know (unconsciously) that the teaching I can receive must be presented via softer media. His judgments sting, couched as they are within a forceful pursuing of me. winging low over a field whose springtime bluets are gone 211 �On our hike he is leading. He skips across the stream catlike from stone to stone. I loiter on the bank paralyzed to make a move, noticing that the rocks are slippery and too far apart for me. toppled bulrush: lingering in its stalks the pudgy moon 212 �m i na- z uki the waterless moon �My Box-Shaped Room �After a summer at Tassajara I become a resident at the Berkeley Zen Center. My box-shaped room with high walls lined in burlap has a tall narrow window, hard wood floors, and my harpsichord. Gazing out at an exquisite monkey tree, I feel contained but very unhappy. dusk— creeping fog darkens the estuary 215 �The zendo itself is in the attic. Two other students live below, like me, in single rooms. Mine is the middle. Adjacent to our rooms is a living room, dining room, and kitchen. It is a big old house with a huge rambling yard. high noon: a Persian yawns sprawls across the stoop 216 �I eat almost nothing. After zazen in the morning (it is still dark) I walk up to the University of California cafeteria and have tea. I put many lemons in my tea and eat the lemons but that’s all. I have more tea at noon, and at night I try not to eat dinner. I stay in my room instead, drinking something warm, sucking something suckable. no-necked crane plumage folded one leg lifted off the sandbar 217 �Other people are having dinner in the dining room just outside my door, but I refuse. When I do eat, I need to be alone. People and noise disturb me. Of course I am starving. Around midnight, when everyone is asleep, I go to the refrigerator and scavenge through leftovers. Or else I stand in the pantry and dip raisins in peanut butter, eating them compulsively for a long time. o caterpillar . . . in your wake a sump of leaves 218 �Hoisting His Wings Toward the Trespasser �I have life in fleeting moments: the clarity of the pre-dawn zendo, soft, fragrant, alive; the initial sounds of becoming still infusing itself into my tired body; later the birds and a sense of place, here, for a moment; the terror of my scale, pulling it from the closet in my still-dark room, making out the numbers; catching a glimpse of the nubile monkey tree enframed by my curtainless window; having tea at school just as the cafeteria opens—sitting here entitled to sit for this brief time. After that my body hurts. By 7:00 a.m. I am beat. one Monarch nomad in these hills— even the sun rises later and later in the chilly sky 220 �I can’t get comfortable. (My harpsichord stool is not.) I am never warm. I am never full. I have no friends and I can’t read (a curious side-effect of Zen practice). fallout . . . a radio blares through the empty hallway 221 �One day around 4:00 p.m. I go to my room, lie on the floor, and stare at the ceiling. My life has never felt so wrong. I question my decision to study music, which is turning out to be too technical and too physically taxing. My room is not a haven because there is no place for me. Accommodating me requires a disruption. I am already fully disrupted. The slightest further disruption is unbearable to me. I want my room to remain in perfect aesthetic balance while I drift in and out ghostlike, tracklessly. I cannot tolerate evidence of my own existence. a full-throated call— arching, hoisting his wings toward the trespasser 222 �I mentally review the people in my life, mostly Zen people as I have (predictably) met no-one in the music department. I sort of care for the Zen people. Since they are trying to do what I am trying to do, we have something in common I tell myself. But am I trying to do what they are trying to do? Why don’t I feel the common bond? The truth is I don’t feel care for a single soul. cross-legged I sit with my back toward these annoying birds 223 �It is 2:00 a.m. Everyone is asleep but the floors creak and sound carries throughout the house. I know this but ignore it. I am alone with the moon in the dining room. For a moment I have me but in a contorted, embryonic way. My body and will are exhausted. Kneeling by the refrigerator mauling through food only to exhaust this too, I despise myself, punish myself, until several nights later the same convoluted geeklike energy rises again, turns inward on itself—feeding off itself—this cycle is my life. It is disgusting and serves no one, but it is all I have. slouching toward the toilet night wind sears me to the bone 224 �Teeny Sprouts Everywhere �I am astonished to be told I can begin sewing a rakusu. Suzukiroshi will give me a Buddhist name and write it alongside his on the back. It means I have a lineage, that my existence falls into a context—those following the Way of my teacher and his ancestors, dating back presumably to Dogen Zenji. slickened by rain slabs of mud glisten in the after-sun 226 �I feel placed. No longer arbitrary, my actions are now informed by codes of conduct that over the centuries enlightened beings have found to be helpful in carrying one beyond ignorance. In Buddhism I find not only an understanding of my suffering but a remedy for it. The fact that I already am showing signs of being a misfit endears the privilege to me all the more since it proves its inclusivity, thus, I think, its profundity. hovering around the bloodroot— fresh billmark across its wing 227 �Issan’s decision not to ask Suzuki-roshi for ordination, and instead just to do the best he can, would never satisfy me. Here is what is important to me as I prepare myself formally to become Suzuki-roshi’s disciple: Sitting at the end of a large oak table, in a corner near a window, relishing the pristine winter afternoon sun as it spreads warmth and light on our assortment of sewing utensils. Feeling a sense of belonging because I have been included, yet suspecting that if they knew my real nature, they wouldn’t have. The solidity of the needle as I guide it through its painstaking procedure and the pliant cotton thread, the integrity of this. Avoiding the mantra we are supposed to chant inwardly at each stitch, excusing myself from this part of it, assuring myself it is not important. The passing of time. Sewing binds my anxiety, holds me steady. 228 �The chair, the table, the light, the process of making stitches, and the frustration of being delayed when I need help, having to wait for the instructor to finish helping others. I know I want to be doing this, but I never seriously consider what “this” is, what it means (to allow—nay, assist others to precede me), am I qualified, can I really live the life of a bodisattva? moonlit path . . . step by step to pee 229 �San Rei Ei Sho. Katagiri-sensei translates for me: “Great Mountain Eternal Supreme Enlightenment.” He says the Ei is special because it is the same Ei as in Eiheiji, the renowned Japanese Zen Temple. the sun sets— a migrant’s pale shadow over the sea 230 �I like my name immediately. It feels whole, sonorous, larger than me. I am slightly disappointed when Katagiri-sensei renders it into English. I think, “It’s so vague. What does it mean—‘great mountain’—and everybody eventually achieves ‘eternal supreme enlightenment:’ ” I can’t relate to it. swollen streambed: depositing her egg on its cavernous bank 231 �Others get names with tangibility and (more importantly) guidance. Mine seems too grand. I may get to something important eventually but I do it by rote effort, focusing on banal details. My fortitude more accurately resembles that of a rocking chair. mud-washed hill: teeny sprouts everywhere 232 �Deaf to the Whistling Winter Birds �Unfortunately the sewing of my rakusu (my relationship with sewing it) is bound up with my relationship with the Berkeley Zen Center. Situated in the flats, an old part of town with sprawling, dilapidated, though still picturesque homes, the Berkeley Zen Center—with its old old trees, flower garden, and immense backyard—offers itself up as a world. a puff of cloud . . . its trailing edge in the quiescent sky 234 �One clanks through its rooms whose shabby elegance is on the one hand compelling and on the other disappointing. It looks congenial. Windows and floors gleaming from morning soji—it looks as if one could easily do anything here, never having to worry about spilling something or damaging something. But for me the general excludes the specific. “Anything” adds up to anything except my thing, which might be for example to read undisturbed in a well-supported chair with lots of light and footstool for any two hours that suit me. April thaw— twigs in ice cover the bud 235 �A second factor contributes to my “displaced” personhood. Strive though he does to manifest the qualities Issan displays naturally, Mel, in his early fifties, falls short of the requisite understanding. Though he might be the first to admit this, even in the admission there is a falling short. Behind his “humility” lay an enormous pride that expresses itself in the predictability of his choices, for example, always for the lesser, the more common—which is a rigidity in itself—a staunch personal preference fronted as a whim that loses legitimacy on repetition. with whiplash speed plowing through the swamp lily pads stuck to his dome 236 �Underneath what isn’t really ease (and that is the problem) is a tenacity more than matched by my own pitifully misguided tenacity. The more desperate we are, the more powerfully we hold on to our defenses. I am more desperate, therefore more tenacious and Mel isn’t prepared for this. He lacks the training. rain— a bird perches on the railing talons clinging to the freshly painted bar 237 �What unfolds is not exactly a battle of wills. I am trying in my own way to be flexible and do what the situation requires. He, having accepted me into the household, is also trying, but is feeling undoubtedly intense disappointment, anger, frustration, and helplessness. I am not what he expected nor what the community needs. roiling, tumbling, riding the winter wind— witch grass 238 �I am in a false position. My scale, my room with no place to be, the music department to which I am likewise unsuited, my lack of friends or ability to have friends, my temperament, which is incompatible not only to Zen practice but to communal practice of any kind, and my body, whose needs overrun the stringent schedule (anorexia, while confining me to a physical/emotional straightjacket, is actually a dysfunctional attempt to address them) add up to an entirely untenable situation. dry red leaves plowing through them on my tricycle 239 �Mel, as practice leader, needs to come to me and talk frankly about how and why I am not working out. He tries once. Once morning he suggests we go out for breakfast and attempts to reason with me. But it is too late. The cold war leading up to this “breakfast” has hardened my heart against him. The very fact that we are at “King Pin Donuts” shows he doesn’t understand. necks cross puffs condense in the icy air 240 �Much earlier he could have 1) asked me to leave 2) made the issues open ones so that at least we discussed them regularly, and/or 3) changed the expectations around the responsibilities of the zendo residents. For my part, I feel that I am a lot more in attendance than the other resident who does almost nothing, though he is available socially. I am not available socially but I cook, clean, garden, and minister in the zendo. My efforts go unacknowledged because something else is the matter. Mel freezes. I already serve an icy master. Warmth might have melted me, but ice simply stiffens my upper lip, the better to contend with my adversary of choice. under ice, under mud deaf to the whistling winter birds 241 �BOOK THREE Rivers �naga- tsuki the moon of the heads of rice �Like the Wild Dogs Who Yelp and Snap Defending a Random Street Corner �I awaken to a certain kind of quiet that only occurs in the early morning. No one stirs. I feel that the world—all parts of it that I need and nothing extra—is utterly available to me. shhh . . . listen . . . the swale is thawing 245 �I arrange a kettle of water to boil while I wash and put on something warm. Then I make the best coffee I know how, handgrinding the beans and so forth. When it is done I turn off the light and take my coffee into a large bare room. I can see above and into the quiet streets. sunrise— swelling in the marsh water new grass 246 �It is this particular minute to which I feel I belong. I know definitely that I am alive. And I know that I have to work hard (strain psychically) to stay alive. I listen intently to the silence, to the lack of anything stirring but the slight creak of my rocker against the hardwood floor. the city sleeps an old man’s rod dangles in the surf 247 �Next door lives an older couple. It is still dark as I walk by and I can easily see the man as he paddles around his kitchen. He wears workman’s clothing and I picture him filling his lunchbox while his water boils for tea. sleeping willow: aroused by the morning’s low-lying breeze 248 �In the dark, in the cold, panicked to face two packs of wild dogs who regularly roam the neighborhood at this hour I think, “Here he is all safe in a situation that’s both predictable and fulfilling. He obviously takes pleasure in his morning routine. He knows what he’s going to do, that he can do what he’s going to do, and how what he does fits into the larger scheme of his life. He fits into his life.” spinning orange and yellow through the sunny pool . . . little cooter, your spots 249 �This in contrast to me who feels stranded—in my self, in my day, in my existence—that even now I am in a vulnerable position, if not a virtually dangerous one. I am a stray, like the wild dogs who yelp and snap defending a random street corner, all they have in the way of territory. northbound monarch hugging the coast in the after-storm 250 �Even as You Screech Your Imminent Silence �The air is crisp—not cold and sunny à la sparkling winter mornings, but cool with a soft clean light. A bank of clouds clings to the horizon. sea birds dodge the white foamed waves— at sunset their soft chittering 252 �I have the impulse to pare down my life, to examine it more closely, tighten it up—a familiar desire that rears its head at unpredictable intervals and insists on being addressed. Typically my wardrobe comes under attack. My ongoing dilemma—what is mine and not mine, what is right and not right when it comes to clothing and adornments of my body—has never been resolved. surveying his juniper snag a bluebird stills . . . the flycatcher flees 253 �It is very important to me to feel that my clothing is authentic, thoughtfully constructed, and functional without getting in the way of me. Wendy, for example, has wonderful clothes and wears them thoroughly, cleaning and cooking in them all day long—“As clothes are intended,” I think, “not like I use them in snippets, for tiny portions of my life, as if they require preserving.” even as you screech your imminent silence 254 �I determine to have only one thing to wear. It must be hand-made and designed by me—which turns out to be “fat pants” and an Indian style over-blouse. I sew this ensemble in three different fabrics: a blue-white feather-weight cotton, an adobe-colored double-layered gauze, and a copper velour, warm and cuddly. The three versions provide flexibility and depth. They need very few accessories. A part of me feels I have hit upon the solution, solved my clothing-koan once and for all. Which is what I want—a final me. balanced on a sunflower her wings—encased in his— grow quiet 255 �Due to constant vacillations, my closet is a hodgepodge of bits of me. I want a consistent me, a me I can know beforehand and rely upon. I want to be able to say (the thought of such a selfcontained statement is of enormous comfort) “I limit my clothing to ‘fat pants, sweaters, and soft cotton t-shirts.” No sooner are the words uttered then I purchase some gorgeous ethnic blouse with richly embroidered sacred designs. beside the impatiens feathering the air first one, then five . . . 256 �Spearing the Sun as it Sets on the Pylons �Sometimes I will see something, buy it on a whim and then go home and get rid of everything that lacks the vision of this thing. autumn . . . on a barely-detectable north wind 258 �I never shop with an agenda. I have a few extra hours, find myself near a store and take it from there. hot summer day: jinking about the hummocks of sand red-eyed flies 259 �Take the nightgown I bought for example. It is white Indian gauze, a sort of handkerchief cotton, and absolutely plain. It is full length and without sleeves, so simple it frightens me. autumn: petals cover the sparrow’s body 260 �The white rayon dress is also Indian. It has short-sleeves, a V-neck and a tunic that falls three-quarters of the way down over a skirt of the same material. The tunic opens in the front and drapes gracefully from a bodice. Its plainness makes my ears ring. spring morning— a speckled egg on the grassy hummock 261 �My splurges are consistent, apparel of some sort or containers— boxes, folders, tin cans. A flame kindles inside me when I recognize an item as mine. Always it enlightens—clarifies, articulates, points in a direction hitherto only implied. My purchases inevitably make sense as acts of aesthetic maturation. from treelimb to violet little imago’s almost-somersault 262 �Recently I noticed someone in the zendo wearing red. I question whether it is appropriate for a Buddhist to call attention to herself in this way. (I don’t stop to distinguish between codes of dress for the zendo versus codes for daily life.) Suddenly I am aware of how loud the color red is, how it attracts (demands) attention, how I, by taking red for one of “my” colors, must have unconsciously been demanding attention all my life. scarlet wings in the brewing storm scuttle by the lake 263 �My eyes pop open. Yes. I am sure of it. As a prospective priest, I can’t be going around giving off signals to pay attention to me. I rip through my closet, my drawers, my shelves. Everything red is removed. Which feels clean, uncluttered, as if at last, I have achieved a correct understanding. monarch: spearing the sun as it sets on the pylons 264 �ha- z uki the moon in which the leaves fall �Two Fat Dove-Colored Birds Waddling their Way along a Eucalyptus Branch �I decide to move to The San Francisco Zen Center. It is the only viable option. skiff of snow: on the barbed wire a pupa blows 267 �The rightness of which is seemingly confirmed this first Saturday morning. Arriving early I am in plenty of time for lecture. Unfamiliar with the protocol, I stand in back alongside visitors who prefer chairs. I look directly at Baker-roshi. He looks directly at me, intently, discovering me. In a flash I feel seen. He “gets” who I am in a matter of seconds. air clear cool the through calls warbler a May flowers: 268 �My scholarship at Zen Center includes my room, which I love, all my basic food expenses, and a $50-per-month stipend. I don’t understand money. I almost resent my mother’s periodic gifts because I will just be getting in touch with how much I have (so I feel nestled in my little amount) when another arbitrary sum arrives and plummets me into confusion. My father, on the other hand, is so stingy that I simultaneously pity him and am furious that he can so forthrightly ignore my needs. your silver girth rips the sea— sea wrack tossed sea stock rocking in the tumbling pebbles 269 �I feel secure in my tiny room. The closet holds a few clothes and the built-in chest a few belongings. Just as there is little chance for excess (lack of restraint) in the haiku I allow myself to write, this circumscribed space provides a measure of safety. shells along the sill a shallow breeze crosses my desk 270 �Puttering around I look up and see two fat dove-colored birds waddling their way along a Eucalyptus branch. Their movements show exquisite attunement. I am spellbound. “I wonder what kind of birds those are?” I think, not caring in the slightest. sunrise: snowflakes dust the new-born chick 271 �Spitting Out the Queen �Dokusan until now has been with Suzuki-roshi who restricts questions to zazen practice. I am not sure what to expect from this American man who certainly would be capable of adding a more intimate dimension to the private student-teacher relationship. I guess I actually expect he wants to talk about my becoming anja since this is a job he recently has asked me to do. I do my bows and sit down. Baker-roshi instantly inquires, “Why are you so thin?” So right away we don’t see eye to eye. my bead of sweat cooling you this sweltering night 273 �While I am piercingly thin, it is as though no one can see—the visible part of me being so unrelated to piercingly-thin me. The thinness comes from an inner imperative, exerting enough control so that I can feel substantial (as opposed to vacuous) and can experience existence through my sense of will. iridescent checker your prenatal profile etched evermore deeply . . . darkly . . . 274 �Under Baker-roshi dokusan is a lot like psychotherapy with these differences: 1) one waits for an indefinite period of time beforehand 2) the session begins with a series of three full prostrations and other bowing 3) the teacher can end the session at any point by ringing a bell and 4) there’s no telling when one will be able to come back. alders the above curly- cry cues your of tailing mist 275 �With Suzuki-roshi such procedures make sense. He is a compassionate master. One welcomes the opportunity to be corrected by him, to acknowledge one’s respect and gratitude. Baker-roshi’s including personal matters (feelings, relationships, major and minor life-decisions) without the support of regularity, consistency, and count-on-able meetings, brings one to a noman’s land. People’s lives are on hold for months because he is inexplicably unavailable. outside the tube an old rose-peddlar’s empty stall 276 �One Saturday afternoon I am scheduled to have dokusan with Baker-roshi. I know he will be late. I think, “Why should I wait? I don’t want to wait.” So I go next door to clean his house, which is part of my job as anja. As I clean I think, “It’s silly to have so many knickknacks. They are useless and collect dust.” Unobservant of my disrespectful (and, indeed, ungrateful) state of mind I proceed, “Maybe it’s his wife’s doing. Virginia is an obnoxious woman always rushing around full of herself. She isn’t even a Zen student.” It dawns on me as curious that most of the senior men at Zen Center happen to be with women who don’t sit zazen. Baker-roshi doesn’t sit very much zazen. Still I think, as I speculate if I dare squeeze in his laundry too, “He is the one who should be doing this. He needs to wash his own socks.” spitting out the Queen the yellow bird’s shrill call 277 �Arrested by a Flower in the Verdant Gulch �An old shriveled Japanese nun who sews like lightning comes to Zen Center. Sewing is her practice. The swiftness, deftness, and sheer energy that she brings to this work, sitting in seiza, perfectly comfortable, is contagious to those who join her. I get very excited. Sewing (silent, intense, thrifty) is something I can do, especially Japanese sewing (magnificently intelligent yet at the same time mindless, so that it becomes a body practice, one with delicacy and subtlety). after the chase arrested by a flower in the verdant gulch 279 �She herself is sewing a robe for Baker-roshi. Soon I notice that most of the students in the room also are sewing robes. It takes me awhile to realize that they are sewing their own priest’s robes, that they are going to be ordained and that this nun has been invited here expressly to help them do this. splashing wet leaves in the cool moist air a male hummer flits to the hophornbeam’s topmost branches 280 �I am surprised because the students are (some of them) quite new and I never dreamed they would so quickly attain the permission conscientiously (now it does seem very calculated) withheld from me. Then it dawns on me, “I am in this room with the pressing question, ‘Can sewing become my life’s work?’  ” I take for granted being a nun and the issue is about what “specialty” I will have in this “field.” I study her person, her stamina, her shiny eyes to see if I can measure up—if my life can in any way simulate her life. Others are just here. They aren’t making any big decisions. the city sleeps one black duck surfs the shallow tide 281 �fum i -z uki the moon in which the nights grow long �Chewing, Excreting . . . Whorls of Leaves �In the context of a monastery where the custom is not to distinguish oneself—to meld as seamlessly as possible into the daily routine—my solo stunt (I am passionate about my thinness . . . I am on fire for this practice of staying very thin) burns like a cut on the community’s finger. For me it is be thin or die. groping, missing— a black-masked hunter rakes the twilight 284 �During low periods I binge, which brings me much lower. Binges are virulent and have their own life span, their own arising and falling. One will click on and I am utterly at its mercy. Efforts to control it are fruitless and take away the pleasure of mindlessly eating for hours and hours. It has to be mindless and it has to be “endless,” otherwise it doesn’t satisfy. Part of the joy is abandoning one’s consciousness and entering a sphere where one is uncondemned. noisy city the old woman lost in her peach 285 �There is also the iniquity, the barbaric and primitive grasping with which one is shameless before the urge to fill one’s mouth. And it is the mouth, not stomach, that is the highlighted region. Quantities of food are washed through the mouth—often food which in a different frame of mind would be unpalatable, crude, or disgusting. the old bowl filled with snow first he slurps then knocks it over as he slouches away 286 �Once in motion, the progression of a binge is absolutely regular. I eat mountains of whatever tipped it off. This is invariably followed by anything I can lay my hands on, first that is rich (with butter or cheese), second that is starchy, and lastly that is sweet. A typical finale might be a box of filled chocolates. Curiously, these stages are irreversible. It seems as if it would hardly matter, but by the time I have entered stage three, for example, foods from the previous stages are unappealing. nibbling the blade chewing, excreting . . . whorls of leaves 287 �Afterwards I sleep. I sleep as if passed out, sometimes till late in the afternoon of the following day. sunset: a mower recedes to the other side of the hillock 288 �Waking from a binge one feels sluggish, toxic, putrid. I want to sleep more, drown out the rest of my life too. That day I rarely eat anything. By the next I am fairly stable, though ashamed, humiliated, and aware that it is not over. It will happen again. Nay—I will see to it—look forward to and prepare for it again. The mere thought of it makes me tingle with excitement. a monarch pupa cracks— tiny ichneumon wasps scramble into sunlight 289 �Hey You— �My face wears a mask whose rouged cheeks and cherry lips shine through a light coat of powder. A tortoise-shell comb probes the tips of my coffiure. Though I have on geta and carry some sort of lantern, my iridescent face—not the white of a face drained of color, but the white of transparency . . . the color of no color—peers from a hollow hole. midnight: in one haywire jolt the forest’s silhouette 291 �I take many showers. I desperately need to shower. I feel I will go berserk if my shower is taken away. delicate crescent: bathed by the light of a half moon 292 �One day I am in the produce section of the Greengrocer, Zen Center’s neighborhood store, when Pam Chernoff comes up to me and accuses me of stealing lemons. I do steal them. I steal food not only from the Greengrocer but from the store down the street, Safeway, and any other grocery I happen to be in (as, by the way, do many anorexic and bulemic women). I know I steal food and that I have stolen food for years, but I have repeated my justification so often to myself that I feel entitled to what I take. Stealing is slightly exciting and very practical. I don’t stop to consider that taking what has not been given is contradictory to the very precepts by which I represent myself as living—that it is impossible to be in a boat and go in opposite directions at the same time. stuffing creamers in her bag turning, leaving— the woman’s eyes 293 �To be confronted about stealing is equivalent to being confronted with anorexia. “No! No! No!” I lie through my teeth. It is a lame lie, transparent, whatever pops out of my mouth. Pam knows I am lying. I sort of know I am lying (I need to lie so badly I don’t entirely “know”). I make myself not think about Pam’s knowing. I deny it with some dopey explanation which, to her credit, she accepts. No doubt the staff had a meeting about this problem. Pam was asked to talk to me and all were aware that no matter how ardently I denied the accusation (which I’m sure they predicted I would do), the confrontation would nevertheless serve its purpose of probably stopping me (helping me). It may have done that. It is certainly one of the more beneficial-to-me behindthe-scenes conversations that affect me deeply but in which I am not included. hey you— perched at my back door filling your beak with water 294 �The Simple Act of Toast-Eating �When I am given the job of baker my heart opens to these Zen people. Because I take it to mean that they understand me. They see that I can’t do what others are able to do, so they give me something else that has its own internal imperatives. beggar’s bag around my neck bundle over shoulder— hey, that’s Saigyō’s shadow 296 �There is a moment in the morning, after breakfast is over, the large platters and steam trays having been put away, and before a crew arrives for lunch preparation, when I am in the kitchen alone. My loaves are in the oven. Soon I can take a nap. In the afternoon I will package and deliver my bread in Zen Center’s van. At this particular juncture I have just about completed a good day’s output and feel myself as available (to the universe) as I ever feel in my life. white bird, blue sky wingspan arched gilded by the sunlight 297 �This would be about 9:30 a.m. Suddenly into my world enters young Rusa, the Chinese-American girlfriend of one of our senior students. She is utterly lovely—thin, trim, composed. Not being a Zen student herself, she does not abide by our daily schedule. In fact it looks as though she is just getting up and coming into the kitchen (as an ordinary person would) to make herself some toast, which she proceeds to do, sitting at a little table eating it, reading the paper (as an ordinary person would). passing a cow four cranes . . . graze the summer pasture 298 �I am dumbfounded. Every feature of her—her beauty, her composure, her relationship, her privileges, her routine, her having her own life—here condensed into the simple act of toasteating—flaunts itself at the core of my being. “How can she!” I shout mentally, which means “How can she know herself well enough to have made the choices that give her such freedom?” wedged in the pocket of the drowned boy— blossoms of butterbur 299 �I feel intensely alone. I continually get from others the impression that everything else (anything else) is more important than me. I exist as an object, appearing where I am supposed to, doing what I am supposed to, just like in my childhood home. Which is to say I am not seen, but wanting this is now out-of-step with the entire Buddha Dharma. gliding shuddering wing-tip stunned by the wire 300 �BOOK FOUR Sky �ka m i na - z uki the godless moon �Stinging Nettle Leaf �It is luxurious to sleep past 4:00 a.m. (Danny is back in my life and has invited me to visit him in Chicago.) I wash in his bathroom and putter around. The day is mine. my cat yawns its slender throat gulps the pale sun 304 �I arrange my writing tools on a large flat surface. It feels right to be in an unpretentious apartment working (my work) while Danny is somewhere doing his work, making the money to support this. (I can pretend for a minute.) stinging nettle leaf . . . glued underneath her small pile of eggs 305 �I imagine myself going on and on, elevated overnight (by virtue of Danny) to a place where I can write and have the activity of my writing taken seriously. Like today, I think, I’ll write for most of the morning. Then I’ll take a walk, clean the house, bake, all things I’m good at. she cocks her head— algae wave in the sunny floodwater 306 �Once the phone rings. It is Danny to see how I am. Irrationally (because he is being very considerate and of course has no idea I am writing/ “working”) I feel slighted, as if somehow my work is interruptible, not warranting the vacuum-packed environment I insist upon and feel deprived without. poof . . . your lacy path over the vast mountainface rockslide 307 �Out in a T-Shirt �Light sparkles through the cold air illuminating in a nostalgic way a certain parochial quality to the concrete sidewalk with its grassy crevices. A Lucky’s seems futuristic. Old Jewish ladies lug their groceries, head scarves tied beneath their chin. the breath of almost-rain on the tree-lined streets . . . out in a t-shirt 309 �I decide to make bread and surprise Danny with six fresh loaves. I buy everything I need, carry it back and work on my bread the whole afternoon. While the bread bakes I sit zazen, improvising a zafu. There is no context (I can tell) for zazen in this house. I sit anyway, wanting to finally, feeling it is the right thing to do despite the lack of the room’s resonance. hunt over . . . a water lily bobs in the waves 310 �Slowly it emerges—all my day’s activities are foreign here: writing the way I write (intensely but not scholarly), taking an aimless walk, baking as a professional bakes (in sizable batches), and sitting zazen methodically. His house (his life) is not set up for this. I can do my things, but I sense I’d be better off if I keep them invisible. dead stalks of kitayoshi conceal the nest from the gunman 311 �Cakes Rising on the Stove �I am full (emotionally and spiritually) by the time Danny comes home. The house (I notice) reverberates with the aroma from the bread and the vibrations from my meditation. Danny doesn’t notice. dusk cakes rising on the stove . . . the moon 313 �He fixes himself a martini and sits down in the living room to focus on consuming it along with salted nuts. I get the impression that this is a routine. Instinctively I sit on the floor next to him. starless sky nosing the flask-shaped chamber— five flashes of white 314 �I want to hear about (so I can picture) him having breakfast, working in his lab and examining patients. “Where did you eat breakfast?” I begin my barrage of questions. Begrudgingly (with a slight tinge of indulging me) he explains that he either forgets to eat breakfast or sometimes he hears the horn of a vendor and buys donuts. That happened today. He didn’t eat lunch. He seems irritable and asks me not to sit on the floor. slapping them, grabbing them, swiping them out of my hair 315 �The martini is having its effect. He begins talking and tells me the story of today’s leukemia patient who is in remission and explains the ultimately irreversible degenerative process involved in having a serious blood disease. He can only help so much. Eventually the person will die. two Siamese tails erect— stare at the injured bird 316 �He fixes a second martini and we talk more about his helplessness to help the few people he does see, the frustrations with his laboratory experiments and problems in general with being on the staff of the University of Chicago Medical School. He’d like to move he says in a tone that implies it will never happen. sun-dried cattle tracks— flapping its wings a hawk departs 317 �Painted Lady in the Understory’s Half-Light �Years ago Danny visited me in St. Louis and we went on a boat ride. I had on bermuda shorts and one of my father’s floppy white shirts. Danny was rowing when something happened and the boat tipped over. We landed in the water and had to swim out, which we both easily could do. shroud of fog mallards bob among the spongy islands 319 �I was amused to see Danny mess up. Danny was mortified, not that he’d made a rowing mistake, but at how my mother would construe his intentions when he, who was responsible for me, brought me home dripping wet in my now transparent clothing. gust of wind— a hairstreak tips on its maple leaf perch 320 �His fears (preoccupations?) were so far from how I knew my mother, who deeply respected Danny, would feel that they gave me insight into what was gradually emerging as his guilt-ridden (Catholic?) psyche. Here again was his old newspaper-reporter consciousness: “Young Man Attempts Seduction: Lake Exploits,” whereas I just thought, “Where’s the seduction? Let’s have more of that!” tippling with dew painted lady in the understory’s half-light 321 �Caught By the Fiery Sun �Another time I visited Danny at Johns Hopkins. I read. I had fantasies and spent my time mentally preparing for the part orchestrated by my latest one. zigzagging up gliding down teeny alpine 323 �Uncertain of the situation, I had brought with me a negligee. Once I spent the whole morning arranging myself in it so that when Danny arrived, it would look (very casual) like I, in my intense business, hadn’t had time to change. I had no concentration for anything except holding myself ready for the moment of his entrance. night falls— lying on a bed of leaves the moon 324 �When Danny finally arrived, clearly preoccupied with the events of his full morning, he seemed startled and a little miffed at what now seems my ridiculous (and contrived) appearance. He only stayed a moment. I was humiliated by my pretense, the dishonesty that lead to it, the lack of self-knowledge that leads to dishonesty, the fear behind that, and the instability and lack of centeredness at the bottom. As I closed the door behind him I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked pathetic—desperate, overlydressed, made-up (to be something I’m not—probably sexy) and totally inappropriate. Blue jeans and a sweatshirt might have been right. little snout beyond the jetty flanked by flowers 325 �I talk to Carol who is at Radcliffe and suddenly we are scheming. Why doesn’t she come to visit too! It doesn’t occur to me to wonder why I am so in need of Carol’s lifeline in this precious circumstance of being Danny’s medical school guest. I simply respond to the exciting idea that Carol might come. horse-mint ripe . . . a din of silverspots in the noontime hush 326 �Carol is her bubbly witty self and Danny is crazy about her. This is good to a point but I noticed that something in Danny that had been inactive around me was now active. There was a charge to the energy that he directed her way, as discretely as possible, but I noticed. I couldn’t help but notice. It was in my face every time they spoke, which made me wonder if she was aware of it or possibly even encouraging it. spring-green leaf tips erase the sky 327 �At dinner one evening in the student cafeteria I got the feeling that if I weren’t there it would have been an improvement. Sitting there (as I unavoidably was) watching as they spoke to each other across the formica table, I felt diminished in my being, erased from the world of ordinary people. It was almost as if (as in the bar scene with Clare in Woody Allen’s Another Woman) the lights dimmed around my recessed figure, simultaneously brightening and warming on the pair as their conversation gripped them in an unexpected yet all the more refreshing bond of recognition and respect. behind the shrubs at the field’s verge caught by the fiery sun 328 �An Orange-Black Heap Against the Gaslit Curb �Yet another time, Danny unexpectedly came to visit me at Northwestern. He was visibly uncomfortable in my grandmotherly space with its white chenille spreads and old lace curtains. The only place to sit was on the bed. In one look, which said “There’s nothing for me here,” he conveyed that removing his overcoat was hardly worth the trouble. moonless night— the edges of my cot absorb the rain 330 �He hailed a taxi which swept us to a restaurant, the sort of place one’s first thought is “Am I dressed okay?” Like his letters, his conversation imbued the banal with the universal, the indigenous with the ethnographic. I had to strain to keep up. big blue butterfly past my eyes and out to sea 331 �After dinner he invited me to his hotel room. I was ablaze. We lay down on his bed and he held me for a long time. He began removing my clothing, my blouse, my slip. I was prepared to dedicate my life to him. Being here with him, enveloped in the sense of somehow this being a beginning for endless passionate times, lifted me to another level of consciousness. Sexually we had never gone this far and I was very excited. rising wind— a wild iris totters from the clifftop 332 �Suddenly (suddenly) the old familiar words entered my ears, “I have to get you home.” I stiffened to contain my tears and barely managed to on the ride back. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t say goodbye. Danny said goodbye when the taxi let me off. I didn’t hear from him for a long time. ghostly wings— an orange-black heap against the gaslit curb 333 �sh i mo -tsuji the hoar-frost moon �Re-Entering the Mountain �It rains. Gusts of wind wisp through the shrubs and trees outside my door sounding elusive, threatening. It rains all night and into the morning so that I awake to the rhythmical sound of dripping from the low-hanging eaves. The steady beat is hypnotizing and for a few minutes I drop back to sleep. I feel deliciously comfortable, my body suspended. A sense of warmth oozes over my chest. listening, dozing . . . as it taps my window pane 336 �Rain warms the mountain air and feels soothing as it softly falls through the moonlight. Shallow drafts brush my face. Whereas minutes ago I felt reluctant, tired, mean, suddenly I am overcome with gratitude. In the zendo I sit bolt upright, supported by the gurgling creek. A chorus of birds are so ardently chirping that there seems to be a wall of raspy but sweet wet life surrounding me on all sides. drizzly day . . . darts and wiggles in the waterweed 337 �Bop. Bop. Bop. Like a woodpecker only gigantic, the han echoes its third round. The roshi’s feet are scuffing behind me as I face the wall. He is barefoot, of course, but being large, his feet drag along the zendo’s clean narrow aisle and sound like my father’s house-slippers. The electricity of his presence pierces my shallow zazen. moonlight . . . deep in the bracts of a pink wildflower 338 �Morning zazen ends. We leave our cushions and the primordial quiet that sinks in with the raindrops. The steady pound of rain, its persistent motion, makes our straight-backed cross-legged posture seem all the more still. By the end of second period we are nestled here forever. a train whistle blows . . . perched in a tree crow closes its eyes 339 �Sutrās (literally “warp” of the dharma) are sermons of the Buddha. Robes draped gracefully, legs tucked under forming a base to our statuesque torsos, we momentarily embody these syllables, each of which, honored by its own thump of the mokugyō, hammers into our being again and again and again. They are startling, even without the translation. morning glories stumbling upon them outside my gate 340 �Rain Bends the Umbel �A warm glow from kerosene lamps beckons through the vaporous light. Cackles from the fire and scrapings of chair-legs are foreground sounds. Sacred texts wrapped in cloth rest in front of each person. Clack-clack go the clappers and each enters her own carefully selected realm of the Buddhist universe. rain bends the umbel . . . the fritillary below 342 �Suzuki-roshi doesn’t press scholarship. He says since we have one, the mind needs food. We feed it each day for an hour and a half. That’s all. That’s the meaning of it. okusan— jabbering into your cellular phone this windy day 343 �Rushing water over stone creates a barely discernible roar, subtle but potent counterpoint to the creek’s continuous gurgling. For the moment I don’t read. The fire, the creek, the building groupconcentration and my warmth (finally) fill me. Christmas Eve listen— snow is falling 344 �It annoys me to read about Buddhism. If I read at all, I want it to address Buddhism indirectly. tiny ginkgo releasing a torrent of rain after the storm 345 �I wrap an interesting book about the structure of Japanese houses in brown paper (to disguise it—in study period we are required to read about Buddhism). The same mind that designs the ōryōki designs living spaces, every detail of one’s daily needs crafted into a feature of the architecture. The inclusivity is mesmerizing. I want to live my life this way. In fact this is why I am here, right now, painfully attending to the neglected (larger) implications contingent upon the extreme good fortune of being incarnated in a human body. spanning the river still faintly purling . . . ribbons of moon 346 �Fragile Limbs Nubbed with Blossoms �My dorm room is a tiny square. Beneath its window is a platform for my futon and there is just enough additional area for my desk, a shiny piece of redwood. Three lighted lanterns keep it toasty. I immediately picture myself reading without being cold, sleeping without being cold, sewing without being cold. It’s also right next door to the zendo. dawn: “peep peep peep”— through my airy curtains 348 �Tassajara is about breathing, and by extension, the next level of care necessary for the body so that it can breathe—an allotted amount of sleep, three balanced meals, a bath, a period of study and rest from work every fifth day. Much attention is lavished on all aspects of these activities so that washing one’s clothes takes its rightful place as a primary concern. One needs clothes for breathing. Therefore one must be prepared to sew or buy them, mend them, wash them, store them so that they stay clean and available. fog rolls in fat gulls huddle over the water 349 �On a sparkling day in March I rather enjoy the outdoor tubs, the sense of others also washing their clothes and then hanging them with pins on the long lines to dry in the sun. But on rainy or bitter-cold days it seems an endless process to schlep my dirty belongings up to the wash area, compete for a space to soak them, return in several hours for rinsing, and then schlep the now heavier load to the muddy field and fight for room on the clothesline. plump, wobbly chewing your way through the rain-soaked leaves 350 �The sun is warm and the afternoon air full of spring. I pull my chair toward a ginkgo tree, close to it but at an angle. Its fragile limbs nubbed with blossoms jut awkwardly as if each branch sprouts independently, full of intention, only later to learn it is in another’s way. I can’t take my eyes off it. It is so young. indian summer: Japanese girls giggle and loudly suck their straws 351 �Cooled Again by the Evening Breeze �A rather broad pathway links the tiny bath houses (one for men, one for women) to the main grounds. Beyond them are hills, meadows and wilderness. moonrise— beanstalks and melon vines droop over the muddy road 353 �One dresses for a bath (robe and zoris), brings along clean underwear and bathing accessories and allows five to eight minutes “travel time” in each direction. It takes planning and some deliberation to pad down the lane and maneuver the hump of the wooden bridge that arches over the creek. starless night: clawing up the slimy bank a river crab 354 �Embraced by the valley’s quietness, the path is sprayed in a thin mist. I cross the bridge, gassho at the altar reciting the gata mentally, steel myself to undress in the freezing air, and step into the water. I pause, knee-deep, while my body adjusts to the heat. I step down one step and the water reaches my hips, then another and it rises to my waist. Then I squat so that I am totally immersed. I swim to the other side, turn around and look out at the mountains, the madrone trees, the rising sun, and listen to the whirling creek. dawn softly softly through the undergrowth 355 �The afternoon creek is lively. Turtles, snakes, bugs, butterflies, frogs, tadpoles, and wildflowers enshrine the slippery stones over which the water gushes. Removing one’s shoes, walking barefoot to the other side of the overpass to the altar where one pauses (to dedicate the act of washing one’s body to all sentient beings), gingerly one enters the open-air cubicles with their cement tubs. mountain shrine: fragrance from an unknown place 356 �Each rectangular tub holds two bathers. During the afternoon bath period there is not time to fill and empty them more than once, so women take turns soaping and rinsing off. Like the Japanese, they wash first and then, entirely clean, enter the plunge or steamroom. high and still on the milky horizon— summer clouds 357 �The plunge is maintained by an attendant at 110 degrees at all times. One graduates to its deepest parts allowing the water to seep up one’s body as the steam enfolds the still-yet-above-surface portions. The serenity of the mountains and trees, birds and flowers sink in with the heat until quite suddenly one is saturated. folding its wings a moth comes to rest— evening settles in 358 �One leaves quickly, drying, partially dressing. The cold air slaps the mind which must emerge from its sated state carrying an even-keeled warmth to the evening’s meditation practice. leaving the pool cooled again by the evening breeze 359 �The sun set hours ago but residual light lingers over our valley with its last vestiges of warmth. Birds chirp and a slight wind rustles through the trees. Though in five minutes the sun will have dipped beneath the horizon, right now it blooms an iridescent yellow through the wild grass. The hillsides are teeming. Chirp chirp. The sun sinks a fraction lower. night falls curtains flap in the shallow breeze 360 �I shut my eyes and listen to the throat-filled calls allowing the cool air to dry the beads of steam across my forehead. My kimono is loosely tied. A shallow breeze brushes my chest, spreads through the wide sleeves and around my thighs as the skirt balloons slightly. A strip of light falls on a wooden chair, ancient and peeling with blotches of white bird-droppings on its flared arms and angled center, the slabs weather-beaten. The sun momentarily hovers, sanctifying the chair, but is gone by the time I slowly pass, returning from the baths to my cabin to dress for dinner. night falls I watch— door ajar 361 �Acre After Acre After Acre Explode in the Four Directions �A breathtaking day. Gold and red leaves shimmer against the sky, their fragility contrasting with the rugged mountainous air. We are seated in the zendo which runs along the creek, one by one shouting our question (the question designed to demonstrate our understanding) at the Roshi. The practice period is about to end. the wind blows stronger— old women rustle through piles of free clothes 363 �“Fire Fire!” someone bursts into the zendo. Several young men bow to their cushions, rolling up their sleeves (there’s a way of tying up the voluptuous black sitting-robe sleeves when one wants to accomplish a daily-life task) as they depart, the gesture indicating, “We’ll take care of this.” winds blow briskly this evening crickets are beginning to chirp tell me—blue jesus— why do you pick now to be silent 364 �The fire roars like wind. Dirty grey air (oppressive air darker than fog so that it’s eerie, unnatural) smirches the chilly morning with its stuffy presence. Deposits of ash, snow-like, invade every exposed surface. One gags on a drink of water. a fledgling drinks . . . insects float on the stagnant swamp 365 �Our routine, our sky, our beds, our baths—everything is polluted with the fire’s residue. hot windless day even the song-sparrow’s nest is deserted 366 �Chop chop chop. The carrot is now a row of paper-thin, saladready (they are too skinny for soup or mixed vegetables) slices. I am momentarily in control. Chopping block, hocho (knife) and me standing, cutting the decisive widths. I feel exhausted, but the wafer-size carrot wheels are perfect. Bashō your rainproof paper hat made with your own hands the one imitating Saigyō’s . . . I too have felt desperately alone 367 �Our snug (albeit gritty) sense of placement in this valley is comical once one sees the firezone from an aeronautical perspective. Acre after acre after acre explode in the four directions, Tassajara a dot directly in its path. snowstorm: one tam-ó-shanter dissolves into the flurry 368 �Our tactic is to cut a trench around the monastery wide enough to stop the fire as it approaches. Fires need food. Trenches have none. Theoretically the fire will extinguish itself (if the wind cooperates). But the fire by now is so huge and so old. Selfconsumption (as in the case of humans) could sustain it for a long time. scorching a no-longer-summer landscape— summer heat 369 �Frogs Wait, Birds Wait, Snakes Wait �After the fire, conditions at Tassajara become crowded what with the extra help brought in to clean and repair the damage. Three and four people are squished into a room. The hill cabin I am assigned is partitioned in two with (miraculously) only me in the front with a view of the entire valley. after the storm a cerulean sky—floods the banks of the deep draw 371 �The approach is up a narrow footpath through idyllic yellow grasses. Perched atop my futon I survey the creek, the foothills of the adjacent mountain, its timberline, peaks and the shadows cast upon them by the sun and moon and clouds. At my elevation pesky blue jays sound nostalgic. Easter sunrise: kneeling by the jonquils in my breezy pew 372 �Indeed, except for the bells, whose reverberations distance renders even more soul-stirring, community generated noises seem remote, quaint, picturesque. cat’s back arched in the waxing moon . . . wind whistles through the grasses 373 �Whereas formerly my room, a glorified trunk, housed my belongings and served as a changing station (tool for the schedule), my present room is a container for me. My new perspective is not only geographical. It is emotional and psychological. I see the context for my desires and can tolerate being deprived with greater equanimity. frogs wait, birds wait, snakes wait . . . the season shifts 374 �The Wintry Thicket Lifeless �At Tassajara it rains. I have told the tenken I am sick and to please bring me hot water in a thermos, later, after breakfast. From my bed I hear the rain softly falling and the sound lulls me back to sleep. A band of moonlight criss-crosses my otherwise darkened cabin. cooling the night with its plashing I doze . . . dream of its plashing 376 �It pours. Clouds are black. Buckets of water descend through the thick sky. Early in the morning I am at my desk. The screendoor behind me is open so that I hear the rain, its steady flush of water. The downpour creates an echo on top of which I hear (1) wind blowing through the Eucalyptus trees (2) the drip drip drip of drainage from the eaves (3) sweet clear singing from a variety of birds, one in beats of three (hoot hoot hoot...hoot hoot hoot) (4) insects on the hill chirping, buzzing, alive and busy (5) a woodpecker and (6) the sound of steel pounding steel. A train whistle blows. Out on the bay a fog horn moans. your mournful call crosses my mind this wet cold morning 377 �I sleep. I sleep deeply and soundly and when I wake the room is filled with muted light. I turn over on my back doubling my pillow underneath my head, arranging the hood of my sleeping bag around my neck snugly while I reflect, starring at the rafters, listening to the pitter-patter pitter-patter soaking the already saturated earth. A Scrub Jay caws. Another responds, caw caw caw, as if railing against the sour weather. no chirps no twitters just rain 378 �Sometimes the wake-up bell will ring, with its primitive and unmistakably firm ring, and I cannot get out of bed. I lay there in the dark, in the glorious warmth of my sleeping bag, feeling remote, reluctant to decide to be at this monastery. The desire to stay in bed, finally to sleep enough, to be warm, to reconsider my life is overwhelming. hatched but slow to uncoil in the mild rain 379 �Through this “sickness” my life emerges. First I “get” that I am sick, the vast extent of it. Then I recognize the tremendous energy that I bestow on the things I choose to do. I can’t help but ask why I pour myself into sewing, for example, and sneak out of zazen, when it is zazen I have presumably come to Tassajara to practice. full moon—facing it knees braced beneath my robe 380 �The answer is evident in my hands. My hands write and sew with immaculate, single-minded passion, passion that is sure of itself, pulsating and ecstatic. In the zendo my hands freeze. All the contraptions I can devise to insulate them beneath my robes cannot prevent their stiffening numbness. winds howl snow mounts the wintry thicket . . . lifeless 381 �Fat White Grub in its Beak �Winter practice period ends with the telltale signs of spring. Mornings aren’t quite so cold, there is more light, a scattering of wildflowers, and, occasionally, afternoon temperatures warranting short-sleeves (no bugs). splash of yellow . . . first crocus on the mist-beaded turf 383 �We poof the pillows, shake and air the quilts, polish the wood furniture, arrange flowers, check and doublecheck the lists of guest necessities—as part of entering the mind of one unaccustomed to monastic life. Our intensity might throw guests off, obscure instead of sharpen the inner space they come to reclaim. storm over— the fragrance of pine in the clear-cut 384 �Opening the gatehouse in itself is a ritual, contextualizing the transition from a purely interior focus to a focus which is primarily interior but now includes our impact upon (and our perception of our impact upon) others. softly scudding clouds . . . a gaggle of sightseers points at the roving flock 385 �At Tassajara the gatehouse is a wooden shack with a very oldfashioned (and temperamental) telephone. As gatehouse-keeper, I greet visitors outside, rarely dragging them into the dreary office. I give them a little map highlighting their cabin, the zendo, the dining room, the baths. I explain our guidelines on conserving water. Like a bodhisattva, my sole responsibility is to anticipate and address the requirements of others. It feels awkward, unnatural. I am too much of an introvert really to care. reeking of the sea facing the sea fat white grub in its beak 386 �Lime-Green Sulphurs Mud-Puddle in the Canyon Dust �One holds out for so long then gives oneself over to a chain of events by which isolated segments of one’s life unravel. The contents scramble. The life force, renewed, released, slowly reconstructs itself, as if one’s karma metastasizes. autumn leaves lie quietly in the sun 388 �One day I have the following thought: “I have spent eleven years as a Zen student resisting everything. What would happen if I take all the energy that I put into resisting and use it for something positive?” eaglet ripping the soldier free from the asphalt 389 �From this seed I develop “yes practice.” “Yes practice” means doing only those things that I say “yes” to with my whole body and mind. I will not get out of bed until there is something I want that much. (I have to find out if there is.) If there isn’t, I will just die, but I am not going to pretend for another second. shrouded in fog a tiny dinosaur inches toward dawn 390 �Soon it occurs to me that I want to write. Whereas formerly I felt I needed a specified subject, now I think: “If I want to write, I’m going to write. I’m going to write a certain number of hours a day just like I go to zazen a certain number of hours a day. I will not worry about what I write. I will concern myself solely with attending my writing periods.” high noon lime-green sulphurs mud-puddle in the canyon dust 391 �I am through with Zen Center. I need to define my own regime. Zen Center has had it with me anyway. I am told privately that unless my attitude changes, I will not be accepted for Fall Practice Period. Indeed, my attitude has changed but not in the direction that would pique my interest in Fall Practice Period. after the storm over the hill . . . zigzagging 392 �Gravid Nymph �Saying “yes” finally was like a birth. And, like most other births, it came after a long period of gestation characterized by saying “no” only the “no” was unconscious. Immersed in the fog of my unconscious “no,” I failed to recognize my own authenticity. tadpoles! bug-eyed and squirmy in their bracken-shaded mud 394 �A predominant feature of this inauthenticity was a sense of impending doom. Initially it hovered around the dreaded unnamed seemingly unavoidable crisis one could feel swelling in my childhood household. The atmosphere of this swelling— forces at work that I didn’t understand, the largeness of those forces (that they were way, way beyond me), my ensuing inertia and blankness, and the resulting compliance (compliance being a form of inertia)—infiltrated all my subsequent endeavors, until “yes practice” broke through the gridlock. warming earth— its scent in an early-spring breeze 395 �Likewise in college, my inability to think and to write perpetuated the sense of being stalked—that at any moment something cataclysmic might happen. Because I couldn’t keep up. a falcon circles evermore narrowly down through the desolate sky 396 �And again at Zen Center where my unacknowledged anorexia stuck out, it seemed only a matter of minutes till the scaffolding of my life would collapse. gravid nymph grasping a leaf with your claw-like toes 397 �Determining to say “yes” . . . making that a conscious act— housing the bits of emptiness and despair that belonged to me and then offering them to the universe—“Yes practice” meant claiming my life. “Yes practice” was the beginning of living my life as opposed to an ersatz life. waving long legs dragging itself through the widening split in the pre-dawn light 398 �shi wasu the moon in which monks scurry from house to house reading the sutrās �Under Ice, Under Snow, a Gracile Wing �Before “yes practice,” my efforts to heal the indescribable thing that was the matter with me consisted of a series of self-imposed traps. even in his company seeing his grey hair I long for his company 401 �My inner world was blank. Nothing sparkled except my boyfriend. When he left, I was desperate for another such object through which I could experience myself. I chose food. I discovered that restriction of food has the side-effect of heightened self-awareness. her lengthening shadow young girl at low tide 402 �Though my body was lean, my spirit was corpulent. The tactic I picked to combat my numbness in itself became a thing to combat, distracting me from the feeling I was trying to address by choosing it in the first place. behind the storm-window latticed with ice . . . dangling threadbare wings 403 �Once I was walking home from school without vitality or joy. I knew it would take an act of will just to make it to the house. I happened to pass a grocery store which, for a flickering moment, offered a ray of hope. “But,” I thought, “what can I get? The food in the store either has calories or it doesn’t satisfy.” the flock recedes— I wander home in the gathering darkness 404 �The extent to which anorexia was a trap dawned on me. If I ate, I realized, I’d lose everything. If I continued to not eat, my life was a mass of listlessness and despair. I lacked the strength to choose— possibly even to stay alive. winter’s end: curled along the window’s ledge a brittle body 405 �Buddhism, also an attempt to heal the unpindownable sense of vacuousness that pervaded my life, turned out to be another trap. I began sitting zazen because I had come to the end of the way of life to which my parents had brought me up. I needed a deeper path—to access a larger part of myself. I didn’t know what this meant exactly. It wasn’t formulated mentally. I was drawn to zazen however at an important turning point. from broken shell to clump of bluestem . . . making a dash for it 406 �I tried very hard to follow the schedule because I believed that I had finally found—consummate and unfathomable—a path that plumbed the core of my being. Despite the fact that it was difficult, I told myself that at least I was on the right track. If I could just exert a little more effort, a little more will, a little more self-discipline . . . flat pink sea: saffron wings flutter over the prawn boat 407 �Ironically, the vehemence behind my determination hooked me irretrievably into another tailspin (I can’t do it and there’s no other choice). As I focused my energies on adjusting to the community (this, I was assured over and over, is Zen practice— “Just follow the schedule,” everyone said, “while you notice mentally the obstacles that arise for you”), I failed to notice my unmitigated sense of hollowness and despair. slipping on the scree her wings smeared my fingers powdery 408 �I likewise failed a third time. As a young girl I fell in love with Danny. I was certain that he was the man for me. I ignored my extreme inhibitions around him, my fear of him, the fact that he didn’t really know me. I just knew I “loved” him. Even after our relationship ended, I proceeded for over twenty years to have eyes for no one else. “My man is unavailable yet no one else will do” puts me in the same sort of bind as “If I eat, I’ll lose everything” and “I can’t do Zen practice but no other path is authentic.” In this manner I constructed an endless series of (boxes) containers (a kind of mothering) for myself and spent a major portion of my life stuck in them. under ice under snow a gracile wing 409 �The milieu of “yes practice” is movement. It includes everchanging me. Doing only those things that I say “yes” to with my whole body and mind releases me minute by minute to become who I am. from the prow of the ferry watching them spin ever faster over the bay 410 �After I formally left Zen Center, I moved into a neighborhood apartment and for awhile continued to sit zazen. One day I had an interview with the Head Monk. He asked about my leave-taking and I carefully explained “yes practice.” He said to me: “Until you say yes, you cannot practice Buddhism.” an arctic basks— wings tilted toward the salmon pink sky 411 �Glossary Anja. The anja, one of the Roshi’s two personal assistants, takes care of matters pertaining to his space. Clappers. The taku (clappers) are small pieces of hard wood approximately two by two by ten. They are held parallel and struck together making a sharp clack. Doan. One of a small group of students whose job for the practice period is to attend to the monastery’s “sound system” (including the bells and drums accompanying formal services) and to enforce the daily schedule. Dokusan. A Soto Zen term for sanzen, a private interview with one’s teacher. Gassho. A Buddhist gesture of greeting, palms of hands placed together. Gata. A short prayer. Han. The han is a thick rectangular wooden board suspended by cords outside the zendo and struck with a wooden mallet. The resulting sound, hollow and sharp, creates a haunting echo. 412 �Jisha. The jisha, one of the Roshi’s two personal assistants, takes care of matters pertaining to his time. Keisu. The keisu (gong) is a bronze bowl twelve or more inches high that is struck with a padded mallet to punctuate sutrā-chanting. Kinhin. Kinhin is the continuation of the practice of zazen done between formal periods of seated zazen. It consists of very slow (half-steps) walking. Mokugyō. The mokugyō (wooden fish) is a hollow wooden drum, quasi-spherical, and carved as a stylized fish. It sits on a pad on the floor where one of the doans strikes it with a mallet to regulate the tempo of sutrā-chanting. Mudra. Symbolic hand gestures associated especially with tantric meditation practices. Ōryōki. The ōryōki consists of three nested bowls, a packet of eating utensils (chopsticks, spoon and setsu), a cotton napkin and a wrapping cloth which also serves as a placemat. Each student is provided with an ōryōki and ōryōki instruction upon arrival at a monastery (otherwise one cannot eat in the zendo). Thereafter the ōryōki is in one’s care. 413 �Prajña Pāramitā Sutrā. Known as the “Heart Sutrā” the Prajña Pāramitā Sutrā is the classical condensation of the six-hundred-volume Prajña Pāramitā literature, translated into Chinese by Hsüan-tang in the seventh century. Precepts. Guidelines for training in wholesome conduct to which a Buddhist commits voluntarily. There are five precepts for lay people: to refrain from killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct and intoxicants. Rakusu. A monastic or lay biblike vestment, a miniature version of the kesa or priest robe. Robe Chant. I wear the robe of liberation, the formless field of benefaction, the teachings of the Thatāgatha, saving all the many beings. This verse of the rakusu is recited at dawn when priests put on their kesas and lay people their rakusus. It is also chanted privately whenever these garments are donned. The kesa and rakusu are the robes of the Buddha, treated respectfully and worn on all religious occasions. Seiza. Seiza is a traditional Japanese sitting posture wherein one’s body rests on the knees and shins. Sesshin. Zen Buddhist retreats are called sesshin, a Sino-Japanese 414 �term that means “to touch the mind.” It is a period of intensive meditation practice. Shijō. The shijō (Cease and Be Quiet) is about nine inches high and struck by a doan three times to signal the beginning of a period of zazen, twice to signal kinhin, and once to signal that another event is about to begin. Skandhas. The five skandhas are “bundles” (forms of the world, sensation, perception, mental reaction and consciousness) that make up the self. Soji. A period of community cleaning. Sutrā. Discourses of the Buddha (literally “a thread on which jewels are strung”), loosely used to mean old Buddhist scriptures or scriptures to be chanted. Tangaryo. A five-day period of practicing zazen continuously from early in the morning until late at night instead of the usual practice of walking meditation between designated forty-minute periods of zazen. This initiation stemmed from a tradition in Japan whereby a suppliant is asked to wait outside the monastery doors for an unspecified time before being allowed to request entry. The long wait was a test of the suppliant’s sincerity. 415 �Tathāgatha. Literally “thus gone,” an epithet for a fully realized Buddha. Teishō. The dharma presented by the Roshi in a public talk. Tenken. The tenken is one of the doans whose rotating job is to take attendance in the zendo and check on the whereabouts/needs of anyone not present. Tenzo. The head of a temple kitchen (“head cook”). Umpan. The umpan (Cloud Plate) is a bronze plate shaped like a fleur-de-lis. It hangs from cords in the kitchen and is struck with a hard wooden mallet to produce a clangorous sound signaling meals. Zabutan. A square mat placed on a tatami as a base for a zafu, one’s round meditation cushion. Zazen: Zazen is the practice of sitting erect on cushions, on a low bench, or in a chair. In Soto Zen zazen is keyed to the breaths and takes the form either of counting them from one to ten or of shikantaza (sitting with no theme). In his book The Practice of Perfection Robert Aitken has the following to say about zazen: “Zazen is itself enlightenment—as Dogen Kigen Zenji never tired 416 �of saying. This means, in his words, that body and mind have dropped away and they continue to drop away endlessly. The self is forgotten and it continues to be forgotten more and more completely through all time. Any residue of self-centered conduct, speech, or thought is wiped away. Any residue of that wiping away is then wiped away and so on endlessly—each day more liberated, each day more joyous. There are milestones on the path, as the Buddha found under the Bodhi tree, but they are no more than milestones and are not any kind of ultimate consummation. Perfection is a process.” Zen. A Japanese Buddhist school concerned with directly realizing the true nature of one’s mind. Zendo. Zen meditation hall. 417 �The Moon of the Swaying Buds is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice; it was released by Adobe Systems in 1990. Cover design: Bryan Kring � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The moon of the swaying buds 3rd edition Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2017 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_050 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Book One - Mountains Book Two - Plains Book Three - Rivers Book Four - Sky Extent The size or duration of the resource. 429 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/dae4536dca95272045e6307efecc6be9.pdf 9d183d1879363acc99862b655e3185b0 PDF Text Text Sunny Day, Spring “When I found Gail Sher’s books, I imagined her having stepped from a Japanese Noh play. Her poems, sharpened by rigorous Buddhist discipline … were tough, refreshingly hard-edged, full of the natural world—constructed of bits and pieces of mineral, insect, bark, summer grass…. They showed a sensibility that was refined, educated, attentive to natural detail, & enamored of the chipped, the asymmetric, the rustic. They put me in mind of the writers of Japan’s Heian court, the best of whom were women. I still hear echoes of Murasaki Shikibu or Ono no Komachi when I open Gail’s books.” Sunny Day, Spring — Andrew Schelling, Faculty, MFA program in Writing & Poetics, Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado FPO PLACE BARCODE HERE Gail Sher Gail Sher is the author of One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers (Penguin), the first of a widely-praised series of books on writing as a practice. She has authored over twenty books of poetry, six book-length haiku sequences, and a critically acclaimed book on bread-making (From a Baker’s Kitchen) based on her years of experience as the head baker at the San Francisco Zen Center’s Tassajara Bread Bakery. Her writing has appeared in over twenty literary journals, and her haiku have won awards both in the United States and Japan. She lives and works as a writer, psychotherapist and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. For detailed information about her, visit gailsher.com. Gail Sher �Sunny Day, Spring �Also by Gail Sher Prose Writing the Fire:Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry Mingling the Threefold Sky • 2013 The Twelve Nidānas • 2012 Figures in Blue • 2012 The Bardo Books • 2011 White Bird • 2010 Mother’s Warm Breath • 2010 The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities • 2009 though actually it is the same earth • 2008 The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines:The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1996 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �Sunny Day, Spring Gail Sher Night Crane Press 2014 �Copyright 2014, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. ISBN: 978-0-9858843-3-8 �for Brendan ��CONTENTS The Slowness of Rain 1 That Was a Flycatcher 23 In the Loud Chirping of Grass 33 The Honk of a Goose 47 A Single Star 65 Drizzly Day, New Years 87 Winter Flowers 95 Walk at Sea, March End 109 At the Edge of Day, Daffodils 117 Sunny Day, Spring 125 ��The Slowness of Rain �Unn, head bowed, shoulders slightly slumped, sat, book in lap, in a stream of morning sun. To anyone watching it might have appeared that she was thinking. Töl, however, who happened to pass, suspected otherwise. Töl simply passed. Inquiring would do no good. Anyway, she already knew. Perhaps from her book, perhaps from the view, Unn had been reminded of something. “Now what was that I wonder.” But when she thought about it, the image would fail. And when she’d try to retrieve it, having subsequently grasped its meaning, both the image and the meaning would fail. Unn had explained all this to Töl far too many times. 2 �° On a table by the window stands a tiny vase of flowers. The woman smells them once then carries them to the garbage. Pink spots on her scalp turn reddish and splotchy in the late afternoon sun. An old blouse flops loosely. A few fat flies crawl around her apron. The mind of the woman is warm, her sweaters and chickens and all the places on the boat . . . “Hello,” Unn offers. “What?” shouts the woman. 3 �° Unn had been reading. Light from the dawning sky fell upon her book. “The days are such that I hardly need a lamp,” she was thinking when she heard a click. “That would be Töl.” Unn returned to her book and to the deep silence of the day. “Was that Töl?” Aware suddenly of how quiet the house seemed, she paused. “Was that today? Maybe it was yesterday.” Unn tried to remember precisely when she’d heard the lock on the door click, but she couldn’t be sure. She closed her eyes. Recently she’d read­—the article was in the New York Times—a war victim who’d been tortured was being treated for post traumatic stress. Though he’d suffered physical pain, his main symptom­—what was intolerable to him and wouldn’t leave him—was the loss of a sense of time. He simply had no idea of where he was in space, of how much time had passed or how long any activity would take. When the therapist slowly said, “Take your time, Sergio, we have plenty of time,” it was as if his sobbing would never stop. 4 �° Unn had her alarm set for four except for once a week when she set it for five. Sometimes she changed it from five to four thirty. In summer and in winter it was the same. As soon as the alarm rang she got out of bed. In both summer and winter it was dark. But in summer, when the light was close and the birds were close, getting up was easier. Every morning was the same. Except for on Sunday when it still was the same only one hour later. Inside, however, it felt the same. She wondered if she used this “same” as a substitute for her husband. 5 �Th  e rains of June the newspaper had said, referring in part to the husky sky and strong, winddriven bowing of the trees. A branch broken off and blown across the hill was leaning against a shrub that itself leaned awkwardly. “It looks exhausted,” Unn sighed, then puzzled over the word “exhausted,” whether it had an emotional meaning. So June was here, and the rains. A single crow on a leafless branch stared out into it. Though its feathers were ruffled Unn could see the clear strong line of its throat and breast. The breast puffed out. The bill was strong. Its eyes were strong and its mind had a strong quietness about it. And dawn too rising behind the rain, despite the rain, had that same strong quietness. Traces of its purity remained on the bird’s skin. The crow was simply staring. It stood on its branch even with her window for a very long time. Staring forward into wetness it didn’t blink. Her own blinking by comparison had radically speeded up. 6 �It began again in the evening. She sat for awhile listening, then went to bed early. Laying there simply allowing—the fullness, the monotonicity, the slowing and slurring of drops against her pane. With time the pattering grew louder. UNNN, he uttered, which is the same. His death is the same. I am without rivers. I am without a sound that can be replicated. What can’t be understood can’t die. It was a heaviness in the air like the beginnings of a storm though the air itself was tepid. She cupped her hands behind her head, to support her head, till it spilled itself out. 7 �When she awakened it was summer. The hill was rich with the fragrance of summer trees and the earth too, under a light sprinkle, oozed with the smell of green. The humming of insects was loud. Loud, however, carried time, as if this loud were happening long ago. Unn listened as the rain fell through the air slowly. Two white butterflies zigzagged across the hill. They’re dancing! she thought, following them over the crest. Their zips and loops—she felt quite mesmerized—and even after they’d disappeared, she stood as if expecting them back any minute. A fat yellow cat, stealthily, very stealthily, was maneuvering through the brush. But then suddenly—nothing had happened—its whole body relaxed. It flipped and flopped and rolled around in the wetness. 8 �“Did you see your brother?” Töl, Unn knew, had been planning to visit her brother. “You asked me that the other day, Ma’am. It’s the weekend after next that I’m going.” Unn flushed. It wasn’t so much that she’d repeated herself. It was more that she had no idea. It was part of a whole complex of things that she was finding increasingly disturbing. 9 �° Unn woke with a start. “She couldn’t have said Saturday. She said Sunday. Saturday is the day she is planning to visit her brother.” Töl had called saying that she thought the time was 1:00, Sunday at 1:00, but she wanted to make sure. It happened when she had looked that although Töl was down for Saturday, since Sunday was free— “I’m just going to change it.” Unn called back and left a message to that effect so Töl would understand. Unn had found the interchange quite pleasant. She was glad that she could make things easier for her maid. Later—it must have been in her sleep—Unn remembered about Töl’s brother. Whereas normally she came in on Saturday, this week she’d asked to switch her day and they had agreed on 1:00 as being appropriate. And here she had gone and said what she had said. Unn cringed with embarrassment. The room was dark. “I should check all of Töl’s times,” she muttered vaguely. It was because of her age that she had developed this way of saying aloud what came into her mind. 10 �° “Let me see. How had he put it? It’s just an old woman talking to herself.” She had read the line recently. Shingo’s wife from the other room had been remarking on her day while running water from a tap. Since he couldn’t hear her very well, his daughter-in-law, Kikuko, was passing on to him what she was saying. “Probably because it was his wife, he wasn’t interested.” Unn had thought that, because what she was saying—that the bush clover was blooming and that the pampas grass was beginning to send out new shoots­—ordinarily would have interested him very much. As it was he answered “Oh?” “What?” “I said, ‘Oh,’ and that’s all I have to say.” While not as aesthetically subtle,Yasuko had her own intuitive sensibilities. She often saw into things in ways that would never have occurred to her husband. Nevertheless he dismissed her. Undoubtedly it was her age and lack of physical beauty. 11 �Though he was alert to the slightest intimation of feeling on the part of young Kikuko—way more than his son now her husband of several years— toward his own wife he seemed numb. In her mind Unn had said dumb but then had thought better of it. This conversation had come back to her gratuitously. Unn knew that she too had a version of Shingo’s disdain. 12 �She also knew that dismissive as he was, Shingo had married Yasuko and provided for her for thirty years after rescuing her from futile, familial humiliation and servitude. Actually he had been in love with her beautiful older sister. He had carried the memory of her young beautiful sister—indeed the memory of this dead sister was more alive to him than the presence in marriage of his wife. Yasuko herself carried the same memory. Since neither ever spoke of it, their marriage was like a blank. Two floating inner worlds connected by a thread. It was this blank that had so affected Unn. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. “Why aren’t I more compassionate?” She had put no thought into the words. Had she paused, she might rather have strengthened her righteous judgments against the man. With the remark, however, she felt all the immediacy of what must be Shingo’s pain. “Wasted. Wasted was the word.” It wasn’t lost on him that his kindness to Kikuko was a fruitless effort to fill an inner void. 13 �Well, not entirely fruitless. Kikuko definitely benefited. She too was in a helpless and lonely position. In that sense their bond was strong. His wife however acted as if she were aware of neither. The comparison had suddenly occurred to Unn Ever since her husband’s death things like this would occur to her. 14 �° Rain fell during the night, one of those long, slow, protracted storms that comes before rain is due. “It’s a nice spring rain,” Unn mused, forgetting that summer was rife. As she lay in the dark listening to the blop blop blop, a flash of a dream . . . Yet nothing remained. She pulled her comforter up to her shoulders leaving her ears free. Behind that dream lay another dream in which the phrase waste of effort kept reoccurring. A riveting call echoing through the hills had resembled her own voice. The call had a haunting quality. It traveled up her spine, landed at her skull and seemed to stop, going no further. Probably it was the pressure that had awakened her. 15 �A lily!” The first this year. “ Indeed lilies were everywhere. The abandon with which they played all waving together in a tangle. One bud on an especially long stem seemed pale and tense like a very young girl. Somehow in her mind white had become its color, as if within its color the essence was white. 16 �° “There’s that girl.” Unn couldn’t help herself. Something round and clean within the slenderness of her body touched her like a bell. It was in the girl herself, as if a hard pure line of pulchritude had rushed to meet her in her body. Unn thought of a stone that burned clean having been washed by sea. The cleanness was in the stone. It had grown solid there if one could see. After the time of seeing has passed the inability to see will cause beauty to grow flabby. She’d been thinking about this earlier. Somehow the girl seemed as yet unaffected. Unn felt the depth of the line in her hair and, as it fell to her neck, in the joint that was exposed by the young cut of her dress. Something about the fabric—at the shoulder it stood apart—“lt’s shy,” Unn thought. “It hasn’t entirely settled onto her body.” The flesh too seemed shy as if experimenting with such exposure. One thick braid flopped across her back. It lay in the hollow of her breasts, which were small though full. Emptiness carried the cleanness. 17 �She must have sensed Unn looking. She’d stopped as if confused. Unn had not stopped looking. 18 �° The previous night Unn had read that for a certain character in her book, it would be no exaggeration to say that his first real problem—“That beauty should already have come into this world unknown to me” —was how he had put it. It changed nothing whatsoever. Therefore he had great respect. Having created beauty, this person’s ugliness . . . the beauty he had made had simply passed through his body leaving no mark. Could this be true? Unn took a deep breath. If the mind, beauty’s mind, permeated her mind, not only would she be changed but the whole course of her evolution would be altered. All the while she’d been thinking she also had been walking. Her eye fell on a tree. A white bird’s nest and its crest of pink-tipped twigs pierced through the impending darkness. And now in the dark, the blackness of its flowers and the blackness of its leaves trembled quietly. “A mind, using beauty for itself, gypping beauty, will not fulfill itself.” 19 �“So it will hoard. Like selfish energy sticks and eventually destroys itself.” 20 �° Someone had given her a lily. Even in its wrappings it retained a drop of dew. Of all the lilies that Unn had ever seen, for its superb whiteness and beauty, perhaps this was the most astonishing. Though she’d carefully changed its water, Unn felt that her actions, or even thoughts, had nothing to do with the lily’s thriving. Eventually it died. She’d held the stem in her hands, rolling it, massaging it, experiencing the wilted leaves rub against her as the petals revolved. A ray of afternoon sun beat upon her back as she stooped to retrieve the scattered ones. 21 ��That was a Flycatcher �The summer sun was fading and the evening air was calm. Full and calm with no breeze. “Windlessness so loud. It’s almost foreboding.” Yet all she could touch was a sense of disparity, a failure of nerves, as if the weather had nerves. A jay had landed rather boisterously on her porch and its caw rattled on getting more and more irritating. The bird was big, its vivid blue, jet-black bars and patches of white smudged. And its feather were torn, as if it had just been in a fight. Even its wings seemed to make noise like the after-talk of an argument. Caw caw caw though quieter now and Unn could see that its mind had slightly shifted. The jay had flown away. The faint sound of a flute filtered through the dimness but the sound made no music. Instead the sound made shadows. The shadows had something sad and something tender and at the same time something unformed, even intoxicating about them. Later on a rock two seagulls pecking at each other’s beaks made the same intoxicating shadows. 24 �° Unn liked to eat dinner around five. It wasn’t so much that she liked to eat at five. She actually preferred eight or even nine which felt more relaxed. Not that she was more relaxed, but the idea seemed to fit more loosely around her body. In truth, when she thought about it in that way, even ten wouldn’t be too late. Unn tried not to think about it in that way. Instead she worked backwards. If she wanted to get up at four and also have plenty of sleep . . . No doubt the edge came from resistance to admitting that she’d come to this. Perhaps to a stranger it would not have appeared that this “this” was in any way remarkable. It might rather have seemed that Unn was intent. Her housekeeper, Töl, gave it little thought. Indeed, more was apparent to her than the simple fact that Unn was eating early. She knew that Unn was preserving her writing mind. Still for Töl it was awkward. About four-thirty Unn would get fidgety. It was a signal for Töl to leave. 25 �“Töl dear. I’m glad you’re still here . . .” It happened so frequently, Töl could hardly elect not to be available. 26 �° “Would you do me?” Unn had asked with her eyes and with an exaggerated disgruntled expression. It seemed the maid was leaving. Töl knew that Unn knew because of the bundles she was carrying and also because of the coat that she was still in the process of buttoning. Töl also knew that Unn preferred that she simply leave. Unn’s arms were raised and her head thrust forward as she fiddled with the thing. “Just as I think I’ve got it . . .” she pleaded. Töl was already putting down her packages. The maid patted her shoulder to indicate that she had finished. After she left, Unn just sat staring at herself. 27 �° Viewing her life as a whole, Unn thought she could detect something moving like a cipher. Indeed she felt stalked. Stalked by her own life. Even in her dreams the same encrypted situation . . . Over time came the conjecture that these little bits and pieces of what had previously been her were lying there crafting her into a future her. She could actually tell when it was happening. As Unn got up—“That was a flycatcher,” she thought, seeing a small bird with a dark red breast hopping about a tree. With a piercing cry it flew off. She was aware she had a headache. In her dream she’d also had a headache. 28 �° “Is something the matter?” Unn, chest to knee, was examining her toe. Not wishing to intrude Töl inquired from the hallway. “My big toe hurts. I think it’s cold. It’s been cold all morning even in my slippers.” Unn was shocked at how fast the words spilled out. Later she lay awake listening to the sound of a train. “It’s going through a tunnel. As soon as it gets out I’ll be able to fall asleep.” The rushing of the train was beginning to resemble a roar. Or was it wind? The roar issued directly from the darkness. When she woke the train had stopped. Several passengers at the front of her car were leaning out the window. It was in a field. Low mid-morning sun spread softly over her body. Across the aisle a woman was knitting. The colorful yarn had little bumps that once worked up resembled butterflies. 29 �° “Is something wrong, Ma’am?” It was the second time that Töl, passing Unn’s room, had seen her staring at her leg. Unn didn’t answer. From the doorway all Töl could tell was that Unn, having positioned herself near a window, was examining something. Töl walked over to Unn’s side. “Ridiculous!” Unn said. “Utterly ridiculous. Yesterday there was not a hair to be seen and today, look at this!” She was standing with her foot propped on a chair, leaning over her shin. Töl couldn’t see anything but her leg. “It’s happened before. One day nothing. The next, each hair is like an inch. They’re always in a clump. A little group near the bone.” Töl was at a loss. She was beginning to see what her employer was talking about, however. “Is the other leg the same?” She asked this mainly so that Unn would feel less alone. Unn didn’t immediately reply. “It’s not like this leg,” she finally offered, as if just noticing the question. That had happened in the morning. Unn’s room 30 �got morning light. She had probably waited for the sun to hit a spot where she could see her leg clearly. 31 �° Unn was on a train. Brilliant light was streaming through her window. Beyond the boiling, diaphanous light, lay miles and miles of wheat fields. The car’s one other passenger had long ago gotten off. At first she’d closed her eyes. She wanted to feel the heat pressing against her eyelids. But then, relishing her aloneness, she’d opened them. Was it the light, the privacy or the wheat fields? Her head was filled with soft undulations of overlapping shafts of gold. Slouched in her chair she watched the everwaving grasses. Sometimes they waved one way, sometimes another. Sometimes the wave made an angle to the sun and a shadow would break out making a sort of ridge. The ridges might be small with deeply shaded inclines. Or, perhaps in relation to the sun, the rounded rows of wheat would be the bended backs of laborers whose life and the wheat were the same. Seeing the wheat usually made her feel lonely. Today, however, she did not feel lonely. 32 �In the Loud Chirping of the Grass �Summer rain. The evening air was soft as Unn sat listening to its patter. The heat too was soft. By night hardly a breath of air touched the flowers. Instead she heard the dark, almost as a voice, inside the grass, in the loud chirping of the grass. The dark was infused with wanting, as if she were the grass or a cricket with its ears. The song and the wanting on the knees of its front legs would be laughing loudly. “What are you laughing at?” He was lying at her side on a little bed. Cool air from the window spread the flavor of his voice around her back and thighs like a cocoon. “Am I laughing?” The laughing was like letters. His words garnered the flow of him into her. And the scent of jasmine climbing up the bricks trailing little salver-shaped flowers. The knowing of him was of always. The miracle of arriving in the laughing jasmine night. But she was asleep. They were in a car. He put his hand on her knee—“is it alright if I touch you?” 34 �° In the morning as she wrote light came flooding over her body. Five bright heads. The sunflowers had reached their prime. “A strong flower,” she mused. It used to be that she hadn’t liked them. They’d seemed leggy and always a little disheveled. Actually they were much like male persons. “Probably they’re Virgos.” The precision of their seeds all in a row suggested the systematic strength characteristic of male Virgos. She didn’t exactly know. “Do people give their flowers astrological readings?” 35 �° Several days passed. It was late on a hot afternoon and Unn was watching clouds forming and dissolving. Like her life, she was thinking. Flowers on the ground scattered in a shallow breeze. The garden was in shade. A huge crow perched on a magnolia. “Elegant but not winsome,” Unn thought, captured by the bird’s stare. Though it looked directly at her, it also somehow excluded her. She could feel its mind both taking her in and, slowly turning its head, marginalizing her. Its eyes were like glass designed to be impenetrable. Perhaps in her feelings there was a touch of sadness. Lately her awareness, heightened to the extreme, seemed to latch onto a feeling and, even when she didn’t feel it, it would be there. As if her life were a dream and everything in it bathed in a transparent blur. What must it be for her to feel marginalized by a bird? The scent of loss and want of deference filled her nostrils. 36 �Standing in the dusk, fixated on the crow’s overwhelming size and blackness, it seemed its world, large and dark, was all that was left. 37 �° It had rained all through June and on into July. Even now—August was usually dry—from the fourth to the fifth it rained, and on the morning of the sixth the shallow rain had shifted to a downpour. Not only had it rained longer, it seemed to Unn that it also had rained harder. What’s more, though the air was still, the sky was heavy. If she hadn’t known better, she might have expected snow. 38 �° “It’s Saturday.” Unn, washing her face and studying the sky, forgot that she was washing her face. Clouds floated toward her. Through an open window a bee. “I’m going to wash my hair also,” she was thinking. Afterwards she left carrying two woven shopping bags. “Did you find everything you need?” The check-out boy was quick. He had most of her items scanned and ready to bag before she had time to fish out her wallet. “I’m sorry. It’s in here somewhere.” “So how has the day been treating you so far?” In addition to her groceries she had a selection of summer chrysanthemums. “Yeh,” he said. “Usually we don’t get them till November at the earliest.” 39 �° It was high noon. A rainbow had emerged as Unn lugged her packages home. The rainbow was behind her. How had she known to turn around? The rainbow sat low, about the height of a person’s shoulder or a little higher. It made a clear arc of colors in typical rainbow order, but the portion to the right seemed to drop off midway down. When Unn stopped to look, the bottom of its arm would vanish. And as she thought this she began to see a second, fainter rainbow forming inside the first one, its colors arranged oppositely. The second rainbow was also missing the lower part of its arm. She remembered earlier seeing two other rainbows but she couldn’t recall if they had the same missing arm. “Neither were double rainbows, however.” Looking south where the view was hidden among some clouds, she could not tell if yet another fainter rainbow was about to appear from behind the clouds’ face. 40 �° Just as a rainbow can only appear within space and not anywhere else, so someone lies between night and night, the bedding of the color black or as if he came out of a screw. As if a mountain stops sending color down its edges, like when he becomes a rainbow after dying like that. The bedroom begins again. It will never leave because he died. And now the sun is alone. Alone is a color in her heart. 41 �° “I’m going to visit the bell.” She knew it was a whim. The bell had been blessed, suspended in a tree and all its sounds dedicated. But she missed the tree which had its own internal sound. And around the tree—between the tree and a little wall that had been raised—some sort of giggling white flower. The youngness of the white against the oldness of the tree—still, some of the monks—“The tree looks tired," they complained. Indeed when one looked carefully, its weariness seemed undeniable. Though many years had passed since Unn had seen the tree, its tiredness could be heard not only in the bell’s sound, but, she felt, even the deep fragrances of the land had been affected. Shafts of sun streamed through its branches scattering gray shadows. Later she had a dream. The temple grounds were dark. Rain, falling in great drops, began to collect on the tree’s ripened limbs. At each lightning flash there was the scent of earth. And the raindrops burned “as 42 �if they were on fire!" That was the dream. When Unn had tentatively touched the end of a charred branch, it immediately shriviled. She was aware of a vague, incoherent quality, unnamable though familiar. 43 �° Certainly he is dying. But he says, No! I feel the press of something in my body. But days and then the light appears and even the bed where there is nothing but the pleasure in the dying. Whereby in the depths of himself, in the entrails of the image in the bottom of himself . . . Will he die? She involuntarily thought with him about what was not being accomplished in him, inimical in him though it appeared. He has begun plucking at himself someone says in reference to death, as if this is the beginning. This is how it starts. The wily expression of death slinks into inwardness, which takes time, like the sand moving, even the coarse sand here. 44 �° That night she couldn’t sleep. Her body felt hot. Yet she could see from her curtain that there was a breeze. And a vast depth to the moonlit sky. She got up and looked out. Crickets. Their sound was cool, unhampered by the sky. A cricket shrills but it is night rubbed with night, the feeling of death happening. When a cricket shrills at the foundation stones of a temple, I am already dead. 45 ��The Honk of a Goose �October had begun. Unn was in the garden. One flower, she noticed, was drooping in the shadows. “It’s a rose. Or the mummy of a rose. A too­intent gaze might cause its petals to fall." Saturated once by the rays of summer light, it still, she felt, conveyed some warmth. Drawn by a sound Unn looked up. A huge cluster of red dragonflies was swirling above and in front of her. So autumn was here. The dragonflies had brought it. “Are dragonflies really red?” Probably it was just the season they were carrying. Or the fatigue of summer. A wave of its weight suddenly passed through her body. 48 �° “Look, it’s going to rain,” he’d said, pointing with his umbrella at some ominous clouds to the west. Storm clouds, now here, now there, passed thundering and black across the sky. The center of one had decidedly darkened. It seemed a white curtain of rain having invaded the distant forest was moving quickly toward them, its wetness breaking into thin fine drops. The drops were intense and left gullies in the ground. 49 �° What had been rain when she woke up by dawn had become a storm. Already in her bathrobe Unn stood looking at the sky. Each branch had its own sky. And the sound of the mountain had the clarity of death. It was not her death. It was just death. That she then saw in a face. The surface of the face with which it had been alive had sunk so low as if the heart of low had suddenly been torn out. The dead bird’s face, thus removed from its physical existence, seemed likewise removed from its true existence as a bird, though she could not say for certain how this true existence manifested. Since it’d seemed contained in the bird, she would equate the bird, and especially its face, with its true existence. But was it simply true existence, which she now realized has no precise stake in itself? Unn remained looking at the face. It was lying on its side with its big eye turned back into its head. 50 �And the mountain ahead of her, it was as if it were being seen without any prior meaning. Indeed it reappeared, renewing its own meaning, after having slept, awakening to its meaning. Beyond the surf and the thick grind of moving water, only the folds in its sides stood out clearly. As far the rest, everything seemed collapsed. 51 �° Unn had left the bird on the rock but she could not leave it. She’d found herself continuing to look though she’d roamed quite a distance from the body. “It’s going to be hot,” she said, aware through the clouds of a strong white glare. Another kind of light had also broken out, not a glare, though it was hard to define. The day was loud with jays. Though none could be seen, the whole vicinity, what with their ruckus, was filled with disturbance. Unn stopped. On an impulse she said a prayer. In the middle of the prayer her eye glazed her fingers which were blue like a ghost, despite the heat, despite the glare. 52 �° It was just a face and in its immaculate skin Unn saw the motion of age—it almost seemed that it was happening in her eyes—the disposition of the skin, more defined, more set, as if the skin itself had always known where it was going. Is he hurrying? The air against the face is white like his face which is pensive and turned downward. The lines are deep. Still this face, fresher and younger, the boy of the face floating free of his body, his face, a clean, surreal white, glowed with no shadow. Sadness, but somehow not her sadness, the sadness spoke of mourning with a high musical beauty. In her heart there surged a supreme happiness that she was unable to explain just from the face. In fact the high resonance of the face on its own volition seemed to come echoing back across the sky and through the rain-drenched light. Even now the cheeks and eyes, the contour of the chin, were filled with his perfume. The person’s form floating up, strength gathering in his neck, was making a cameo of his body carved in relief of the rain’s dull thud. For Unn, the face and the rain were like two seas of transparent emotion. 53 �It’s Luciano,” Töl announced. He was holding “ a bunch of cornflowers. Their blue was soft like the sky. Some of the petals facing away, accentuated perhaps by their drab green stems, bore an ineluctable sense of oldness. When he’d entered the room he had been carrying the flowers, but as if his purpose had left his mind, he just continued to hold them. What do you suppose the word “sparkling” means in the last line?” Luciano finally grumbled. Unn knew what he meant. When he eventually glanced over she was staring out the window. “I’ve thought a lot about it. Since he left it open...” Her word “open” trailed off. Luciano said nothing. “My deepest sense . . . my deepest sense is that she had killed him and that she was pregnant with his baby. ‘Sparkling’ means that her revenge was a success.” “But that’s what I keep wondering . . .” Then he’d paused. “If Keiko has Taichiro’s baby, it would be Oki and Fumiko’s grandchild!” It was said in a hush, as if the 54 �reality had just dawned on him. Unn’s thoughts had wandered to a painting. A man and a woman with almost identical faces, long and prim with tight mute lips, stood side by side with their baby son in the middle. All three wore black with a priestlike collar. While the parents’ skin looked ashen, the child’s burned in gold. A soft fleshy gold. Its head was bald except for a tiny black topknot and its baby penis was gold. Its innocentbut-stern expression plus its young vibrant organ were the composition’s subject. Crossing all three was a thin angular red line. 55 �° “They wouldn’t have to know! There would be no reason for them to know.” After her student left Unn continued thinking. “Keiko and Otoko could raise the child with neither Oki nor his wife knowing anything about it.” Unn was picturing Oki as he had been after Taichiro’s drowning, putting his arm around Fumiko’s shoulder and leading her away. It was symbolic of Keiko’s triumph. It wasn’t a choice. Oki now, bound by his circumstances, was simply an old man. Unn tried to picture how the relationships might play out. Had the fetus followed murder? Keiko would prevaricate. But would Otoko abandon Oki’s ersatz child after hers had been so brutally taken away? Kawabata had made it clear that if Keiko were pregnant the child would not be Oki’s, but Taichiro’s, Oki’s son. Unn had the fleeting image of a very old Oki suddenly smitten by a girl whose beauty—she’d be fifteen, of course . . . Unn’s body stopped. 56 �° Later she remembered a dream. In low dunes by a shallow tide two butterflies were frolicking. They darted out almost to disappear, then darted back, a deep blue against the sky. More arrived and the space became a ring, a swarm of wings washing over the sun. “This light is pure blue,” she said. The center of the flame was foaming. Yet the wings looked frozen. The swarm had spread so as to be like a glacier. 57 �And now it was fall. An old Monterey Pine, its lower branches spread out wide and very near the ground, stood such that in the late-afternoon light it appeared to Unn almost dreamlike. And there was, she felt, an even older quiet in the exquisite subtlety of each of its leaf ’s dulling shades. Her eyes were down. Trailing shadows played over her cheeks and arms as she ambled along slowly. Here and there delicate white flowers thread their way back into the woods. 58 �° While Unn along with everyone had felt the time change come unusually early this year, having seen the light glancing off the leaves, instead of, what had become so prevalent, a kind of dreary lowering of day into coldness. Layer upon layer of their broad-fingered shadows fell upon the walkway. Unn didn’t move. It was after 4:00, the sun about to set. Seething with life in numbing air the earth had quieted itself to a certain restrained low. The honk of a goose roused her. An old transparent emptiness opened—she felt it in her heart—and into the emptiness sank the honk of the goose. It occurred to her that geese—“but what am I thinking? It’s more a question of wanting to hear the honk again!” 59 �° “Please bring it back. Pleeeease . . .” she pleaded. The bird had flown out while she’d been feeding it. She thought she saw it land in a tree across the street. Since the tree was what the parakeet would see—its cage was by the window—she stood, also by the window, staring out unable to think of anything. “Tweetie! Tweetie!” It usually would respond by hoping over and pecking at her finger. Though her calling over time conveyed increased desperation, its cage, now empty of the bird, all she could do was continue calling. 60 �° One day the sun had come out to the clear song of a lark. “Did you hear the lark?” It was Töl. Her words felt sharp against the wet late-afternoon sky. The pines aglow with flares gave off an astonishing assortment of colors. Subsequently, from the seat of a child’s swing, Unn gathered some scattered petals. The place was empty but the swing kept swinging quietly back and forth. Nothing else in the park moved. 61 �° “I know but I was just saying . . .”They’d been walking toward the bay. As soon as the rain had stopped, a gay, silver light appeared between some cloud-rifts. Then a thick-throated chug, apparently from a ship. “That was a kingfisher. Did you see that low-flying bird back there?” He had been facing the same direction staring at a long plume of smoke through the dusk. It had been then that she’d leaned lightly against his arm. She remembered her surprise at the warm solidity of his body. “We picked a good hour, didn’t we?” he offered casually. But she’d sensed that he was confused. Had she instinctively drawn toward him because she’d felt a kind of absence in him or because of some inner coming-to-terms with what might have been difficult, living together as they had, under the circumstances that they had. The depth of their connection and her deep knowing of him made such thoughts seem entirely natural. She’d been unable to respond. Her body, however, had suddenly perked up and her pace and gaze were alert. 62 �° In this way autumn had neared its end. It was still too early for the full flowering of her favorite white chrysanthemums, but the colors of the leaves made her listen, not just to the leaves, but to the birds and the amazing sunsets. The streets were hushed, yet the hush had an expectancy. Teeny flowers of bright, strong blue appeared among weeds shrouded in mist. Earlier there were birds. One or two with the same few notes. A very thin bird hobbled across the road. “It’s limping,” she whispered. 63 ��A Single Star �For November the weather was balmy. Bulbous leaves were flip-flopping about. But the air was dry. And windy. “Fire weather,” people were saying. Day after day brownish clouds trapped the sun’s potential light, but then it cleared. Without rain. And the dawns too, their blood-red glow—but with no drops, their burgeoning stance seemed menacing. Finally, in a baleful dusk, a small rumble of thunder. 66 �° “Isn’t that rain?” Her body all but leaning against the glass had been facing slightly away from him. He turned to look in the direction she was pointing. “Could be. Is it supposed to rain?” “No, I mean really. It’s not just mist hovering over the pines, is it?” The moisture was wrapped in clouds. A low-rolling clump lumbering above the bay and the overcast sky were nearly the same color. 67 �° The rain itself had stopped leaving the air sweet Exiting a cab Unn watched a leaf, first tumble laterally then land in a recession at the roadside. “It’s resting in air, holding on to air!” It alighted on a dead body. Motionless, on its back, the animal also seemed to be resting. Though its fur was black and shiny, its belly was white. Mud had worked into its paws. Inside its beaklike mouth lay a soft, fleshy pink. “It’s a mole,” Unn intuited, though she had no idea what a mole looked like. It was exceedingly small and its eyes especially seemed very small. She stared for a long time at its crumpled skin and hairless tail. 68 �° Departing the museum Unn felt bereft. She’d spent the whole time on a single portrait. To Marry a Mule. That was the caption beneath a photograph of a young Chinese man in black tuxedo and white ruffled shirt next to a small white mule, rouged and behatted and decked out with flowers. The man too held a bouquet. From out the folds of flimsy pink fabric trailing off the mule, one bestockinged leg—mesh ran half way up its thigh—stood demure, almost prim, conveying a definite sense of devoted submission. The floor was covered in shiny pink something and a red and pink curtain had been improvised as a backdrop. The curtain showed one white star. The effect was quiet and full of restrained passion. It was not at all foolish. Indeed, what was disturbing, was the intensity and seriousness of both the man and the mule’s facial expressions. One felt their pact. The perfect purity of their commitment. The artist’s name was Wang Jin. “Performance in Laiguanying village, Beijing, July 28, 1995” was all the placard said. 69 �Unn was reminded of a book of peasant altars— the little nothing devotional objects that had moved her so profoundly. And here again, in this seemingly ridiculous photograph. But there was nothing ridiculous about the man. In fact she’d never seen a jaw that said “I know precisely what I’m doing” with such certainty. And integrity. No doubt it was symbolic. The man was marrying his own stubbornness. His bride was a political belief. Unn felt her heart jump. 70 �° Rain had come down in torrents during the night and now, back in her room after washing her face and brushing her teeth, Unn felt the residual weariness. Very fat, very slow—one drop at a time seemed to land on her porch with a crash. Plop, plop, plop. The sound would weigh like death would weigh. Her eye fell on a flower. Though it was just a morning glory, probably wild, the ordinary indigo of an ordinary morning glory, its green and the intense purity of its blue seemed so innocent against the fence, clinging and at the same time arching back in the sopping air. The air was its support. For its brief span of life Something whimsical about the flower, both young and about to die. It came like a sound. As though she could hear the rest of her life. 71 �Finally the long spell of typical lateautumn rains, soggy and cold, settled in. In the morning on her walk, there was nothing but the muddy sea glimpsed through some beaten palms at the water’s edge. Around 4:00 it started again. “A peregrine’s for luck,” she thought, as the shadow of a wing swept overhead. First one wing then the other dipped as if it were trying to find its stride, and then, just when it seemed about to drop, instead of downwards it glided backwards and upwards. Though the incoming tide was roaring and the sea quite black, in her mind it was sable and carried the coldness of the color of mourning. Sables are not solely for the dead, however. 72 �° Dank cloudy days succeeded one another as the leaves fell and the wind grew dark. “Whatever is happening seems to be happening everywhere,” Unn mused, taking a seat near the clinic’s bayview window. A receptionist at her computer was chewing gum. “What kind of flowers are those,” Unn asked, pointing to an arrangement of fake bluish blossoms dangling over the filing cabinet. “Maybe there’s a tag.” The woman got up to look. Returning to her desk she’d just shrugged her shoulders. 73 �° “Be careful. The ground is still wet here.” The speaker, speaking loud, was holding a person’s elbow. Huge sporadic drops had begun to spatter against the glass, so sporadic in fact that between drops she’d forget. Instead, the memory of a man in strong daylight in some sort of large room popped up. It was the image of his hands whose left pinky finger wore a long, carefully polished nail. The tip was pointy and extended well beyond the flesh, which was olive-colored and luxuriantly smooth like a woman’s. The hand took hers gently but the nail was held apart. She remembered something young, even impetuous, about its color. And the breath of sadness that it carried. How many hours had he poured into tending it, every day, clipping, filing, buffing. As if the showiness of the nail pertained rather to what was sheltered by the nail. Her gaze dropped to his toes. A few were painted orange. “Skin beneath the nail’s tip feels to the person 74 �like a newborn’s,” she recalled. Just then one of the toes had wiggled. Unn quickly withdrew her eyes. She apologized to the toes. Later she apologized to the fingernail also. 75 �° Unpleasantly wet days went on. Feeling quite drained of energy, Unn stayed in bed till 10:00. Shapes above the sill took sharp forms in the lingering rainwater. And then she heard the crows, their discordant shrieks and the beating of their wings as they took off. First fully, then less and less fully, she was conscious of a certain foreboding. It seemed to her now, as she readied to get up, that that experience hadn’t happened. 76 �° A chilly wind had broken by the time she’d bathed. Sitting with her tea, the lines of rain, bent in eerie light, cast—“shrill” was the word that came to mind—shadows. “Shrill” was in my dream.” Something . . . because she could barely do it with her body . . . someone had awarded her a body that she thought she could use, but she woke up. The borrowed sense of strength had stayed with her however. The words of a war song, though in a different language, arose but fell away as the dream fell away. They were just stray words. Yet they repeated themselves and repeated themselves. 77 �° The night said rain and as Unn progressed briskly through the streets, she could feel the rain cloistered in the fog, not yet released by the fog. The air lost space even while Unn sensed limitless space. There was no sky, just protuberant air refusing to slacken its tightness. A sound, from the inside of her ears, also felt tight. “I’ll close the window,” Töl said, as soon as she walked in. Unn’s face had relaxed but her jaw, almost jowl-like, staunchly protruded like a man’s. She’d glimpsed, she felt, something comparable in herself to the spaces of the night, one limited, one limitless. As Töl drew the blinds the impression disappeared. Then instantly another the shape of a black tulip. The solidity with which it stood sank into a quiet that seemed only to involve itself. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think,” said Töl, placing an arrangement of gourds on the table near where Unn was seated. Luciano had dropped by. He’d been struck with their seasonal color. 78 �His casually elegant arm offering them to Töl woke brightly in Unn’s mind. Several stalks and numerous fleshy fruits rolled about a tall, thin vase. “They’re round,” Unn said. “Usually gourds are asymmetrical.” For a long time she sat quite stuck upon the point. 79 �° That had been several days ago. The experience came back as she passed a still-unfixed path lamp. “Should I say something?” A deep reluctance welled up. Then the memory of her husband who had a habit of leaving on lights. “Should I say something?” When he died of course, the habit had also died. Unn was thinking that except for her husband, she didn’t know anyone who had died. That is anyone close to her. But then she remembered that her parents had died. First her father. She couldn’t remember how many years later her mother had followed. They’d long been divorced. Neither of their deaths affected the other in the slightest. Unn was appalled that she could forget. 80 �° Walking by the sea she felt mesmerized by a sound, as if of rain but it was soft, like an essence, as though the fog had turned, not to rain, but to dense vaporous bits of its own flesh. As though the fog had died leaving a remainder, like the sensation around her nose after she removed her glasses. Her glasses, Unn felt, had a ghost. She’d go to take them off, yet the sense of their being on, the memory of her glasses was alive in her skin apart from the object and more palpable than the object. And tonight’s fog. Even while it was there, its memory was even more there. “Are you asleep?” Töl was about to leave. “It’s more a kind of slumber, a quiescence from the fog,” Unn answered drowsily. Töl paused. It’s the waiting of a fish on the inside of a word, Unn blurted out. It came from another world. “Well, I’ll be leaving now.” Töl had said it in a hush. It was clear that she was interrupting. 81 �A sultry day. Not the weather but her state of mind. The day itself was nothing special. Perhaps it seemed so because the day before— after weeks of fog, a ruddy glow from morning till late afternoon, had set the whole of a windswept landscape off in pure red light against an astonishing pale sky. The earth lay red, with rocks like bones, trees like bones. The brightness of the bones seemed to be burning icily. Hilly pines stood out darkly. 82 �° He is red and his body a transparency of all that is held in what we think of as a red color. You feel that there is in him some necessary and very important thing, also very red. The brain of the color is motion, red without sky, so you just see what is left. even if the sky moves. A layer of cold mountain color cascading into pockets, a few blazing peaks poked out against the darker ones. 83 �° And now floating clear, now hidden by a cloud, a single star shone through the haze, though she could not tell where the star was. The faint red of the star seemed to flow down the mountain’s face. And the moon too, a darkish red, was working its way down from the summits. “It longs to escape the sea, to circumvent its pull as it falls with the night into blackness.” She could smell the sea, the deep, swarthy water, its undulations, and even the moon’s impenetrable color had condensed and filled her nostrils. Black light. There was a drab poverty in the scene, yet under it she heard a massive, urgent poise. 84 �° The rain began slowly. It was soft, almost a spray. “Its wetness speaks of gentleness, the gentleness of benevolence,” Unn thought. Indeed it felt like a sign. “Drizzle, after all, composed of the tenderest dew . . . it’s incompletion itself, therefore, inadvertently, it will be a portent of incompletion.” Such anticipatory awareness had arisen only lately in her. The recognition brought neither excitement nor curiosity. Instead Unn felt a wave of irrelevancy, a wooden sense of deadness that she couldn’t place. “It’s ceaseless. Yes.” This was clear. Drizzling is always somewhere. Because it is incomplete, because it will never stop. “But what if it did stop?” 85 ��Drizzly Day, New Year’s �It was still raining on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day was also rainy. The sopping trees, the feeling of waiting palpable in their limbs, carried a kind of pressure. Her ears felt tight. Her hair also felt tight. The receptivity of the trees—she would have thought it would be the opposite—created a kind of slouch, like the laxness that comes after so much waiting. From her room, which looked directly west, Unn saw the dim brightness of a year-end day being sucked back into the earth. 88 �° The next day, Monday, Unn woke with a sense of dread. A blustery wind had risen from the sea. You could hear it in the grass, and in the mountain beyond, a quiet, chilly glow that she recognized from old paintings of Christ. As though the body itself were suffering, but the heart, the essence, was not suffering. In one painting a soft, plump trail had sunk its way into a long, drawn-out sadness. Even now, as the day slipped into dusk, it was the doleful aftermath of that sorrow that drained into Unn’s increasingly cold body. Her eyes were cold, which cold, meandering down her spine and settling in her feet, felt oddly final. The image of Christ’s feet—the painter had pegged them with one nail—would thicken, sharply, the sensation of numbness in her own feet. She had seen the painting in her youth. Yet the effect had not been sad. The effect had been uplifting. She had, she felt, heard Christ’s blood flowing into her. Actually, she could still hear it. 89 �° The thump of rain splattered on her thoughts. Rain carried by wind—she experienced it in her chest—the rich moist smell, and then below that another stronger, fuller-bodied one. And below that? An unpindownable perfume, faintly from far away. As gentle steady drops continued to fall and continued to spread more thoroughly through her body, she suddenly saw her feet rising in air. Detached, unbounded. Free toes. Suspended in air, which was mountain air, the feet seemed to inhale in full gulps. Though they were only feet, she sensed the complete person to which the feet belonged. Not an image but a sound drifted from the feet, a vague sound, like snow in the distance. Before snow, snow is in the air. Arriving at this air. The whole point of his life is arriving at this air. She could feel the sky making it. The space of falling snow, long and late at night, reminded her of her husband’s eyes. 90 �° He said it was his death. He knows, he said, because he’d said it in a dream. It was already quite dark and in the south where he was looking there were no clouds. The clouds stood to the north. From there lightning and a roll of distant thunder. She too had felt the passing, but to her, in her dream, she thought she was remembering it wrong. 91 �° Finally the rain stopped. The trees were plump with dripping. It was hard to tell, if behind the drops a second rain weren’t beginning. The second rain would be skinnier, a thin veil over the first, increasingly recumbent one. “It’s the pity.” She was still thinking about Christ, just now Christ’s face, but when she looked, she saw her own sad face. As if her light, opposed to its own radiance, was opaque. In Christ she saw the face of the face, whereas in herself she simply saw the face. She saw, she said, “a not-reflecting light,” which was the tale of her eyes, but not the tale of her heart’s eyes. In her thought she felt her nullity before Him, He who was anterior to her mind. 92 �° And there, in the dead of night, the only sign of life on the deserted shore was a beached fishing boat. The shadow of its prow, long and black against the sand, made the hour, shivering in white almost rapturous. Strange she felt so safe. Even the moon’s rays detailing the boat, in the intermittent wind she felt its peace in the pit of her stomach. The sea was dotted with eyes. The sky with stars In fact Unn felt invincible. Somewhere inside she knew she was impervious. Her body was impervious and her mind, also, against the lurking dark forces. 93 ��Winter Flowers �An ebullient winter morning, clouds piled in the sky. Unn stood feeling the youngness of the sky as if she were five, clean and fresh of every possible movement. As if her life, in terms of her body, hadn’t yet happened, though there she was with her age. Only day sounds could be heard. A spritely bird, brown with a black and white head, swooped to a land in front of her. Its features were clean and its hop struck Unn as delightfully young and clean. Having looked around, probably to feel a wind current, it flew off. 96 �° Then she felt it. Snow was falling on her lightly. It fell on the road, on the withered leaves of oaks, on the dingy fences and disheveled, wasted patches of dead flowers. It continued to fall, noiselessly and bright, but not enough to cover the ground. Even the flakes that fell on her coat vanished leaving no sign. It’s surreal white like snow that is impossible, she thought. It didn’t entirely make sense. And as she stood, gradually becoming wet—­ “There’s no sign of snow over there.” It appeared to be falling only in this one spot. Indeed the snow seemed petrified having lost its way in the approaching-night air. The sea too seemed to be petrified. She was conscious of its weight as of a presence around her shoulders. 97 �Later it started again. Though not as mild as before. “It’s just flurry. Maybe it will pass.” No one was about. A biting wind cut into her eyes. In the distance echoed the scraping sound of a trolley. 98 �° “Has it stopped?” She’d been listening, then losing her awareness of listening. The wind had died. Suddenly a hare shot out over the snowdrifts. The skin of the snow is scratched, Unn thought, as if its hollowness had been pulled back into her, its oldness frozen into her. To Unn’s old ears, the hollowness of the sound seemed similar to the surf. After breaking on the rocks. Receding from the rocks. It was smooth to her mind, like seething or fizzing. 99 �Thank you very much for bringing me. I “ really had a nice time. And I have a feeling I may get better now.” Unn read the line again. The first time—“They’re like a little girl leaving a party.” After seven or eight years of being inextricably parted, they’d practically collided, one getting on and the other off a train. Re-reading the words forced Unn to name what must have been Utako’s constraint. Jiro was now married. Therefore, his acknowledgement of something important still between them—“I hope we can take care of what’s important”­—Utako couldn’t know how to receive such a gesture. It was because she still loved him, and he her. After all, though it had been taken away, they had had a child together. Utako had been amazed to learn of the great measures Jiro had employed, first to discover the child’s whereabouts and soon thereafter its death. But she didn’t believe it. “Even if my father told you . . . being here with you like this, I feel sure that it can’t be true.” 100 �Jiro recalled going to see Utako’s father, getting the address of the family who had taken the child in and even going to their home to mourn, but he said nothing of all this to Utako. Instead he’d said, “There’s already snow on Mount Fuji” as their train swept by. “You’re right. The first snow.” Utako had read an article about it that morning in the paper. 101 �Seeing Jiro enlivened by the subject, she added, “The picture must have been taken yesterday.... It’s odd isn’t it—the clouds keep moving, but the arrangement stays the same.” Unn also struggled with the word “odd.” Jiro had doubted—having little reason to look closely, it was just a newspaper photograph of Fuji— that she’d looked carefully enough to judge about the clouds. So that when passing it on their return—“There are no clouds at all today”—to Jiro’s retort, “Yeah, it’s not very interesting, is it” she’d said, “Oh, I don’t know. You don’t think it’s because we saw it yesterday? Even looking at Mount Fuji must get boring if you see it all the time.” From that he’d concluded that she was ready to say good-bye. It was then that she’d said what on first reading had to Unn’s ears sounded false. They must have sounded false to Jiro also because his response was the same as to what she’d said about the clouds. He just went on looking at the snow as if, if he looked hard enough, the snow itself would decide. 102 �Unn was in her chair. She had closed the book and was staring out the window. Frost lay thick across the ground, except for a few places where there was none at all. “Utako wasn’t bored. She was spent as a woman. ‘Thank you very much. I had a very nice time’ would sanction Jiro’s life and certainly push him away. As her parents had before on learning of her pregnancy.” “Over the years Jiro has gotten used to this from Utako.” 103 �° That night Unn reread the story. It was because of the last line. She felt haunted by the last line. Jiro’s going on looking at the meager snow after being with Utako like that. From Jiro’s point of view—taking the whole thing from his perspective, he had fallen in love and conceived a child only first to have his lover taken away, then the child given away, the child dying and his lover forced (it had to have been by fiat) into marriage with someone who’d abused her—how must it be for him to see the dregs of her after, bearing two more children, she’d finally escaped? The war of course had complicated everything The emptiness and disappointment of what had been so promising, like yesterday’s first snow . . . “It’s not really very interesting, is it.” “Oh, I don’t know . . . ” Utako had countered, touching Jiro’s hand. That was when she’d brought up the idea that it might be repetition that made it boring. Clearly she was afraid that she had used up her stay. “But that’s not at all how Jiro felt!” Utako’s need for care and comforting somehow 104 �made it hard for her to see that Jiro too needed to recover. Later Unn had a dream. Nothing remained but the single line—The drift of the snow has exhausted itself in its color and there’s nothing left to go anywhere. “Yes,” she thought. Then suddenly another line. Laughter comes from where his sharp word because it snows and snows. “Yes,” she thought, even more forcefully. 105 �It had started drizzling before Unn realized it. “Is that drizzle or mist? Or snow?” she wondered. Closing her eyes, she strained to hear the faintest sound of white surfacing the leaves and the tips of twigs on dead winter branches. The night was cold. The powdery white would fall, pause and fall again, till the quiet earth would rest in the gentle warmth of a snow field. By dawn the snow had stopped. The land had stopped. Unn delicately stepped through the new white world like the first person on earth. 106 �° “It’s beautiful isn’t it?” Töl had joined her by the window. For a long time they stood watching the light. “Sometimes snow makes the air warmer,” Unn commented. She’d said this but she wasn’t sure. It was coming down hard. Yet the hardness had a quietness and to Unn the quietness did make the air seem warmer. All along her path evergreens bowed, their branches turning a kind of silver. She threw back her head and stuck out her tongue. The snow, still falling, merely trickled down her tongue without congealing into water. “Now there’s snow here,” she muttered, massaging a spot on her chest. A little puddle was forming between her breasts. “It’s not cold though.” Actually she wasn’t sure. The wetness had been a shock but it had quickly warmed to her body. Even as it dribbled down past her ribs and onto her waist, the thought arose—it’s almost spring. 107 �° While snow had fallen intermittently during the day by dusk it had cleared. The air definitely felt warm. As if its light were sitting close to the water, hugging the water, yet falling quietly away. Later it snowed again. Eventually that too stopped and the next day was clear and pleasant. Unn wiped some slush off a bench and sat down. Three birds had flown across the sky flapping their wings as they passed overhead, but when she looked up there was nothing. Then she heard a kite. Her eyes—she’d tried to place it, but instead of the kite she saw a round empty shell like that of a former animal’s body. Though small it was beautiful in dark mottled colors. Yet it hardly seemed like anything. There’s no sign that it has ever been anything. It came over her in a flash. The sky was blank. Maybe the sky’s tired, she concluded. Anyway it will change. 108 �Walk at Sea, March End �Seeing spring sunlight flooding through the window, Unn bounded up. The inexplicable oppressiveness that had lingered with her for days was gone. Along with the cold weather. Though the maples carried but a touch of new green, in the morning air­—“They’re blossoming alright!” Beneficence had emerged. In the leaves. In the sky. It seemed to float on a soft wind toward the sea. Whatever forces had been in store for her, that had tried to touch her darkly, that had already begun to touch her darkly, had somehow receded. 110 �° The next day Unn rose early. To sit in the quiet air. The sound of the air, early, very early, had a riper quality than later air. Indeed the room, bathed in subdued light, was intensely silent, which Unn enjoyed. A leaf she had been watching kept aimlessly turning. “I know this leaf . . . ” but the thought yielded to a sort of mute presence of the day. As if its body has turned to day. Then it fell outside the stimulus of itself so that it was no longer day but simply a knowing in its body. 111 �° “It’s spring!” Unn shouted. Clouds were scudding. Five or six pigeons cut a low diagonal across the park. They were huddled in a group but facing different directions, scouring for food apparently. She sensed an indescribable oldness in the undulations of the birds’ bellies. Even the wrinkly sea it seemed would speak to oldness. With the pigeons themselves strutting about, one might say pulled, their gestures seemed irrelevant. The sadness at first was sadness for the birds but then it came to be directed at Unn herself. Becoming old, having had your experiences, you want them to stay long in you, to dwell in you so that you may become pure. Yet she found their beauty cold. And they left a sense of coldness. After they’d flown off, the place where they’d been felt to Unn almost prohibitive. 112 �° That night, walking north along the shore, even the color of the water made her shiver. One very white pigeon with elegant brown markings swaggered through the chilly air. The helplessness of the bird imprisoned in its body—Unn stopped for a moment to get the full import of its body. Watching its nervous, directionless jerks, it seemed to her that within the limits of its intelligence it knew that it was helpless, without the selfconsciousness of knowing. The knowing simply was, like its feathers knew and its beak. Like a wild creature exists in the full capacity of its knowing. 113 �° The previous day Unn had seen a crippled butterfly Beside a path below a hill it had been hobbling along, or rather hopping. Its hopping seemed like hobbling because the insect lacked a wing. “It’s a baby.” Its single but complete wing had all the markings of a Monarch. She’d crouched to see it clearly. “Might its wings be so tightly shut that they merely appear to be single?” To her it seemed that the shadings were different. “That butterfly is maimed,” she said, as she again stood up. The felt sense of what that must be remained in her body. Even now, standing on her porch, seeing the slender threads of rain vanish in the earth leaving no trace, she wondered. 114 �° The hell realm of a body born to fly but having the inability, as if the inability moved in a life of its own, like a crime or a lie seems to follow the person, usurping its mind, growing its own vocabulary of behavior. 115 �° Later from her bed the beginnings of a storm. Gulls skimming low over water marbled in light were no longer just gulls but the grayish wet melt of sky rising out of darkness. From one point of view the surface of the sea looked black, but the offing was stained with pink and the mountains beyond were also a rosy pink. Two gulls were looping around some innocuous­ looking whitecaps. Eventually one flew off. Unn had expected the other one to follow but it simply climbed a little higher and continued circling. 116 �At the Edge of Day, Daffodils �The first thing Unn saw this glorious April morning was the sun shining through her curtains. In an opening made by the breeze she could see a patch of sky drifting lazily through the trees. She saw, she felt, the warm brightness of a winter sun full with the burst of spring. She could hear it. Inside the sun. Indeed the sound seemed to change as she placed her attention there. It wasn’t so much a sound as an absence of something, as if behind the sun’s brightness something was missing. Perhaps the sun had so given itself to spring, had so emptied itself to spring. From somewhere upstairs came the scampering of a child’s feet. Back and forth, back and forth, and in the energy that would crescendo just before it stopped there also was an absence, but this absence was not the same as the absence in the sun that even with the child’s clatter was present to her. Her room had a freshness about it, like the end of a spring storm. In the depth of its light she heard the sound of the sun soften. 118 �° As spring came gradually, day by day, despite a still­ lingering frost, Unn found herself thinking spring, as if it were already established. “It’s just a prettiness to things,” she heard herself musing. It was less the hills and the color of the sky than the touch of light, its sweet, palliative freshness that so aroused her. Frisky clouds sailed over the sun. The light would dim and again shine clear and each time its clarity— and the impossibility of anything other than this clarity. As she had thus been thinking, sparrows had been chirping. A large fat bee, almost too fat, appeared to be resting. Or was it dying. It was in a corner in a patch of shade. Its black and yellow stripes were loud though the bee itself, already the dust from the corner would be enveloping it. But it was still moving. The legs and feelers were trembling slightly. Something about the motion, however, suggested wind, something dead in wind. 119 �The body had no volition. Its light had gone out. What had looked like trembling was simply wind in its fur. She stared at the bee whose body seemed stiff. None of the insects were paying it the slightest attention. 120 �° The bee was definitely dead. And had been for several days. The fact that she hadn’t noticed carried a certain vacancy. The blank left by the vacancy would probably stay on in her body. The blank left by the vacancy. If a person’s character is formed by his or her experience, wouldn’t what one hadn’t experienced, what one had the opportunity to experience but hadn’t, or maybe had but had forgotten, wouldn’t that also be a formative factor? Forgetting an experience would not have the same consequence as missing the experience, however. Some purplish stems, almost too vertical, seemed to be straining upwards. Something about their skinniness and almost armored fierceness. “Those flowers look hungry,” she railed. A snippet from a dream: A flock of birds landing on snow, stark black wings against bright bleached snow. 121 �“Were they hungry?” They would be beautiful anyway. But beneath the breathtaking image of their bodies . . . 122 �° “Now how many I wonder.” Unn had spied another mushroom, its white button cap hidden by a flower it had sprung up under. She had come to view the cherries. From the blue sky framed by young leaves—“bristling” was the word that came to her to describe their crisp yet sweet little arch upwards. Over the years she had stared at them absently. One tree—why had she not noticed it—huge graceful blossoms floated up around the smaller ones creating a dark outline. Was it their sumptuous life or imminent death that clouded her heart and therefore her perception of this utterly dazzling day. As if she saw the day and simultaneously saw the ghost of the day. Unn remained motionless. Double blossoms were swaying in great bunches in wind. The black austerity of the branches exaggerated the pale flowers tinged by clusters of buds. Though subtle, she could clearly make out each star-shaped center marked with sharp pink lines. 123 �“That must be where the sun is setting.” At one place the haze was a warm, clear pink. She saw, she felt, a bright spring day tapering off into a kind of blankness. “Does the mind in a moment of dying taper off into a kind of blankness?” An image from a book floated through her mind. Blood from Kikuko’s nose had fallen into a bowl of water. As Shingo had poured it out, he’d watched the reddish traces swirl around the basin. To him their pinks seemed artificial. 124 �Sunny Day, Spring �The late dusk of a long May afternoon had already spread across the pines and eucalyptus as Unn, home from a walk, pushed away a sense of unrest. “It’s backwards again,” she muttered, noting that one of her three prayer wheels was spinning the wrong way. It was turning to the left, counter-clockwise, whereas for the prayers to be chanted properly, it needed to turn to the right. Not that it kept turning in the same direction at the same speed. Sometimes it went a little faster or a little slower. Sometimes it simply stopped, then re-began its strained, backwards movement. 126 �° Narrow lacy wings and its exceedingly slender body, still in almost-summer air, but its “still,” she felt, was full of ·movement. Its black and blue and leaf-green coloring held the wait in a pass. “Try standing,” he’d instructed. “Quick. It’s about to take off,” she’d whispered, motioning him to her side. Its huge multifaceted eyes met at the back of its head. Apparently its wings, long and thin, beat alternately for better control. She felt the soft warmth of his arm next to her arm awaken in her body just as it flew away. “Okay. I’m standing.” 127 �° She missed the bird, she realized, watching it “check” maybe one last time for its former flower. She too had been charmed by the beauty of the yellow blossoms. Which had been replaced, first by nothing and then by a plant not nearly so showy. “Yet even when there’d been nothing, the bird had returned.” She said this aloud so as to convince herself. Because she had been so touched. The perspective of a bird previously had not occurred to her. Was it the same bird? During the period of the less showy plant she had noticed what appeared to be a robin, land, look around, then lightly hop over the hanging pot’s rim. One could only imagine that she’d laid an egg and was carefully warming it. A second bird too would take her place occasionally. Then they’d vanished. A long time later Unn had found an abandoned shell. “I should look up the size of a robin’s egg versus a sparrow’s egg.” Immediately she wondered if she hadn’t already done that. She could almost taste the motions of 128 �having already done that. She stood for a moment trying to dredge up the memory, but she could remember neither the time nor the outcome. It was as if it had never happened. A wave of revulsion for her forgetfulness passed over her. Though she knew that the action, if indeed it had happened, could not be passed over, that nothing is passed over, she nonetheless could not get rid of the feeling. For a second she remembered a dream. There was water and sky and she’d been naming the several blue colors that she could see. 129 �° The clear sky to the west, the birds skimming low. The presence of the bird, the smell of bird, here and there over the ground that yielded under her. The sun had shone dimly on the spot, a mountain setting near a fen. Hearing the birds, the sadness in the sky, as if she were hearing her own internal sadness because the sky had been so touched by her. The place of touch exists in sky, later, after the birds go home. What is the end of its endlessly touched hollowness? 130 �° The sun was high. A songbird in a tree was making pleasant sounds. A shallow, swift-running creek propelling itself forward and downward in her body, was, she thought, a strikingly beautiful blue. “Blue like the mountain bluebird.” In the dream she’d said this aloud. The blue in the bird had become a palette of different blues that the artist was mixing “to make the bird a thrush.” Many birds had become the one bird then. “How many birds may fit into a bird?” “What could it mean to say that birds ‘become’ or ‘fit’ into one another?” One bird was walking under water making small flicking movements with its wings. It also walked along the creekbed gripping firmly onto stones with its large claws. 131 �����Sunny Day, Spring is set in Bembo, a typeface designed by Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation in 1929. The cover art is from a painting by Gail Sher. Book and cover design: Bryan Kring, Kring Design Studio, Oakland, California. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sunny day, spring Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2014 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780985884338 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_058 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. The Slowness of Rain That Was a Flycatcher In the Loud Chirping of Grass The Honk of a Goose A Single Star Drizzly Day, New Years Winter Flowers Walk at Sea, March End At the Edge of Day, Daffodils Sunny Day, Spring Extent The size or duration of the resource. 144 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/eaab5874182c023375d11438050d39ed.pdf 5b056779f1ed457a8d35a42a0d3b89e6 PDF Text Text redwind daylong daylong �other book s by gail sher Prose The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice (Penguin 2002) One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers (Penguin 1999) From a Baker’s Kitchen • (Aris Books 1984) Poetry Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse (Night Crane Press 2004) Look at that Dog all Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms (Night Crane Press 2002) Moon of the Swaying Buds • (EdgeWork 2002) Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • Fifty Jigsawed Bones • Saffron Wings • (Night Crane Press 1999) (Night Crane Press 1998) One Bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • Marginalia • La • (Night Crane Press 1997) (Rodent Press 1997) (Rodent Press 1997) Like a Crane at Night • Kuklos • Cops • (Night Crane Press 2000) (Night Crane Press 1996) (Paradigm Press 1995) (Little Dinosaur 1988) Broke Aide • (Burning Deck 1985) Rouge to Beak Having Me (Moving Letters Press 1983) (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem (Square Zero Editions 1982) From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting (Trike Press 1981) �redwind daylong daylong Gail Sher Q night crane press 2004 �Copyright 2004, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press, 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 www.gailsher.com Cover art: Gail Sher No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN: 0-9726115-2-5 �For Brendan ��book one ��The Painter’s oils were flat The painter’s oils were flat. Single-toned except for the dribble down the linen’s periphery. Sometimes it soaked in. Or left wedges of naked cloth. Sometimes little globs of color piled up in one spot. Within the canvas, the crosshatch of opaque/transparent sections, like windows on clay or brownstone yellow. Caressing the color or the movement of the color, framed or gathered up. A woman will emerge at the edge of a skirt. Not the woman but her emergence is what the brush captures. ❍ A gust of chirp. First light flickered through the trees and onto the drenched pavement. “It must have rained during the night,” she’d thought, surprised, tiptoeing over the courtyard’s shallow puddles. 3 �Her pleasant dream resurged. Woodwinds, pianos, violas, bassoons — in what had once been a rather large, shabby room with Formica tables and linoleum floors. Reaching toward the dream . . . slipping back . . . toward the color of hay. Her urge toward this color, its precise, crisp (nay brittle) mix of yellow, brown and green. What did it hold, she wondered. 4 �Black sky and whirling flares Black sky and whirling flares tailgated her — some place. Should she stop here? There was nowhere else, but “here” seemed like it was still road. She slowed down. Her hands trembled in the spinning lights. New sun oozed its way over slimy land-fill water. Mount Tam yawned like a cat behind the Golden Gate. The previous day, as she’d gotten out of her car, a sable cat, comfortably curled on a neighboring hood, had stared her down. “What’s he doing here?” she’d found herself wondering. She imagined some scenario where the owners had run back to their apartment for a moment, but when she’d thought about it, it made no sense. They would have left it inside the car. Still, the cat seemed settled, not about to budge. Slowly the tears formed. 5 �Wind howled and pellets of rain Wind howled and pellets of rain — bop bop bop. The world was black. Her neighbor’s light, off. She lay still. The window above her bed was partially raised. Sheer curtains fluttered, then poofed crazily over her head. Shrill wind sounded like a cat. Spray, first a film then driblets down her neck and onto her sheet. Wind, aired out, smelled clean as it poured mistlike through the slot in the dark glass. Then it pooled and felt sloshy. The front part of her room faced a quiet street. She rarely pulled the blinds. An evergreen had blown across one of the windows. From her bed it resembled a (huddled) homeless person. Just then she heard a cat. A real cat. Pink light from a street lamp distilled its way through the storm. A pack of dogs was pacing under it, lurking, carousing, sniffing. One sharp nerve panted its way over two front lawns. The floorboards creaked. “The old woman is restless,” she thought, helpless to even think of assisting her. 6 �The four children “The four children playing twenty questions downstairs in the children’s room could be heard clearly on the second floor.” Such was the opening sentence of (in her opinion) a way-too short story. The quickest child turned out to be the youngest, a second-grader, who correctly guessed the word “raindrops” from four hints. The precocious boy’s mother was insisting that the neighbor’s child (the child who asked “Does it sound like — drip drip drip?”) had clearly known the answer and “let” her child win. “If rain makes noise, it’s raindrops,” she’d said. “That’s not true. The sound of rain and the sound of raindrops aren’t the same,” retorted a supporter of the second-grader — not his mother — who, it turned out, was, to begin with, embarrassed by her other (older) child’s choice of the unpleasant word “raindrops.” She felt that the neighbor’s youngster, knowing that her boy (when leader) always picked unpleasant words, would easily have guessed “raindrops.” It was obvious to her, and therefore doubly humiliating, that he had more or less “given” her little one the glory of winning. The squabbling of the children plus the symbolic distances of both the parental eavesdropping and subsequent commentary, duplicated later in their 7 �own marital squabbles and distances, fascinated her. But the real hold, what carried over to the next day and even the next, was the author’s unequivocal distinction between the sound of rain and the sound of raindrops. Of course it was so, but she had never thought about it. “Well, that isn’t entirely true,” she thought, now that she was thinking about it. Quite often, especially at the junctures of the day — dawn, dusk, midnight — she found herself particularly relishing the multi-layered — “screened”? — sounds of gushing rain, the whoosh of it, against the weighty drip drip drip from the eaves. She would actually stop work, close her eyes and listen. Could “raindrops” (the word) be ugly? (She had been reading a translation.) 8 �Kawabata’s fifty-ninth birthday Kawabata’s fifty-ninth birthday had been only a month away when the collection of stories was published. That was her age now, she thought, unsure of the import. The story, entitled “This Country, That Country” was the byline of an article featuring England’s Princess Margaret who apparently had changed her mind about her betrothal to Group Captain Townshend. Four years previous (while visiting Balmoral) the lovers had hoisted a stone onto a mound of similar stones, publicly acknowledging their feelings. The article showed a picture of the very mound in question. The journalist made the point that while it was impossible to tell which stone the Princess and Group Captain Townshend had added to the pile, since none looked as though the Princess alone could have lifted it, they must have lifted it together. When reading the article, Takako, Kawabata’s heroine, had tried to picture the Princess as she would have looked hoisting the stone onto the mound in tandem with the Group Captain, but the image that came was simply an image. Whereas the previous day Takako had felt sorry for the Princess (who was forced by church law and royal custom to abandon her beloved) that 9 �feeling was now gone. Her empathy itself seemed like a foreign story. That an image which one day earlier had held this person enthralled was today simply an image — that the empathy she had felt (not hard to imagine feeling for one pushed to such an extreme) had evaporated — the accuracy of the depiction jolted her. 10 �Rich night air Rich night air, liquid air, soft and bubbly (champagne air). Soon it would be morning air. The memory of that other air, close to morning, but not as close. Funny how a few hours made such a difference. That other air had stars. So numerous their ring echoed through the mountain valley. Indeed you could smell them. They lay at your feet throbbing. ❍ Snails and roots. The dug earth exuding, breathing a calliope of themselves. She had belonged. Home was here, though she knew nothing about the land. Gushy mud. Slobbery and clay-filled. The wetness had oozed its way inside, soiling her. (The mold as she dried.) Be sleeping in it. Upright, though not at first. Upright walking and at first seeming-to-be. But that was not the night’s fault. The shiny stars would have held her had she been weightless. Gooey mud was burdensome in addition to being black, skulking. 11 �So what was the dread? Why did she fear the black part of day? ❍ A lamp draws to it night. A collection of lamps, night and the smells of night-pushing-on-toward-morning and light and morning-sounds already throbbing. Making things. (A policy helps. “I will do this under these circumstances.”) That other air held policies out. “Here,” it said. Here she felt none of that. 12 �The rain had stopped The rain had stopped. She plumped her pillows and lay back. “It must be a new moon,” she thought. Not a shred of light in the sky. A wave of anxiety pulsed through her body then lodged in her abdomen and inner arms. Like a short, its afterbuzz a limp shivering splattering through her being. Was she worried about something? She couldn’t tell, which was odd. She ran through the gamut of her potential worries. “Moon or not, my mind howls,” she thought picturing a coyote’s throat, curved and taut beside a cactus. Once she’d found a pelt. It was warm as if a hunter had recently skinned it. When she’d taken it to be cleaned, the proprietor had said, “It’s coyote. I’m sure of it.” The skin had been cream-colored with beautiful brown spots. Strange. She had always pictured coyotes as gray, light wolf-gray. 13 �A gloomy day “A gloomy day,” she thought, brushing her skin in its quiet light. She opened the window to a moil of birds, peeping, screeching. Sun spilled through the vines. She shut her eyes, tracing the flickers through the flesh of her closed lids. Dawn clung to its last full flush, gleaming brilliant light. Nothing was in her mind. She wasn’t even sure what drew her to the window. Earlier she had pulled her car into the garage. Following its rising gate, she’d caught sight of a woman partially behind a curtain. She had felt the woman’s eyes drilling into her features, porcelain pupils in the pre-dawn shadows. “It’s good to brush your skin,” a polarity therapist had told her. Recently, a massage therapist had told her the same thing. Victorian women brushed their skin. “And they were famous for their glowing skin!” the therapist had exclaimed, pointing to the places she had not brushed carefully enough. She herself couldn’t tell. She’d started brushing because it felt good. Her limbs tingled. “They’re smiling,” she thought. 14 �“Animals love to be brushed,” the massage therapist continued, but when she’d pushed for a reason, she simply got, “It makes their skin happy.” Had the therapist tried to explain it scientifically, she probably wouldn’t have paid attention. As it was, her answer had instantly seemed right. Ever since, she’d brushed her skin first thing in the morning. She vividly recalled the day her polarity therapist had said, “You should brush your skin.” She’d felt bewildered and mistrustful. “Why?” she’d thought. “What good would it do?” Her belief had been that though it may be beneficial, it wasn’t worth the effort. Even as he talked, inside she knew she wouldn’t do it. Indeed, she’d forgotten about his suggestion until now. Lately, she has become aware of this mistrustful side to her nature. Having thought of herself as erring on the naïve side, it came as a shock. Sure enough, she watched herself mentally be quite stern with an acupuncturist who was running late. Only an accident prevented her from expressing her annoyance. The acupuncturist had been highly recommended by a person she respected. “He mostly treats lamas and other spiritually developed beings,” the person 15 �later remarked. Right then she’d felt her position change. Probably she had not brushed her skin because she hadn’t trusted the polarity therapist. “What does he know?” is closer to what she’d thought. All these years she hadn’t admitted it. 16 �A full moon dripped A full moon dripped through the gray-green dawn. She lay still, enjoying the warmth (it was just beginning to graze her room) and intense quiet. A part of her loved waking with the light, with the birds and early morning sounds. An equally strong part preferred puttering about in utter darkness. “I almost forgot about blue sky,” she heard herself murmur, glancing at a portion through the trees. An inexplicable tiredness had crept back into her body. She wondered what kind of day it would be. (There had been drops on her window earlier but then they had stopped.) And what was this resistance that kept coming up, the nagging, a tangible depression in her heart? ❍ The odd leftovers from her dream . . . the cap of a woman pianist and Tibetan hat of a bass player. Her grandfather had been rummaging through her closet, its numerous wire drawers full of nightgowns and house dresses. He couldn’t find what he wanted and seemed displeased with her, as if her choices had been wrong. 17 �He chose something pink, very short, with no bottom. When her grandmother had remarked, he shushed her in a manner that said, “I can’t be bothered to explain the obvious to you.” She lay there recalling the disgruntled face of her grandfather. ❍ Whiskers was the word that came to mind. Perhaps because he was short. (His gray and white scratchylooking hair.) So that her impression was of rather a gruff person. That had been confirmed once, over the phone, when, to her surprise (she had asked that his shop make a small adjustment in its routine) he began screaming at her and slammed down the receiver. Yet examining his collection of carved rosewood animals — turtle, snake, rhinoceros, porpoise, rabbit, albatross — buttery and gleaming — something clean filled her chest. “They’re not for sale,” his tall wife (her woolen trousers also scratchy-looking) offered. Though she admired them, she wouldn’t want to “own” one, “owning” implying an emotional 18 �investment. At her age she needed not to overwhelm her heart. She guessed his wife was Scandinavian, probably Swedish, since the shop serviced Swedish cars. She seemed wholesome or that in her youth she had been. 19 �Blue “Blue! Are they really blue?” She had never heard of blue tulips. It was exceedingly early in the year, even for the precocious tulip. She looked more carefully at the four small stems. One of the heads was opening. Sure enough it was blue. Or sort of blue-violet. The pot stood on a wheelable reading stand, a segment of which tilted. A person wanting to read could adjust her book at just the right angle, while still having tea and some writing utensils, let’s say, at her fingertips. Or one could simply station the cart alongside one’s chair. For awhile now, it had stood in front of a window next to a chaise lounge. Soft morning light beamed in through the blinds. Several days earlier she had placed a pot of clamorous red tulips on the dining room table. Their yellow centers had been shedding and some of the petals looked loose. ❍ And now that the flowers were falling, the black earth in the grove’s shadow looked white. 20 �So that when she passed through the garden, hours before dawn, the vista was ghostlike. Four small, softly curved petals flared out on the sod. Their stamens were long. “They look like they’re stretching,” she thought as she bent over to examine the blossoms. Some stuck together in little piles. Others formed a cross. “When had they started to fall?” Strange that she couldn’t remember. They hadn’t accumulated. Though dozens fell, they seemed to simply melt. She wondered if it happened this way every year only she forgot. These gorgeous flowers bloomed and fell on the periphery of her mind. ❍ Mist cowed the sky, the grass, the creepers and, seemingly, the old man. At 5:00 a.m. most of the residents were asleep. “What could he be doing?” she asked herself as she softly said, “Good morning.” Hadn’t she heard that he was unwell or becoming unwell? “How does one become unwell?” she wondered as it registered that he had been alone, disheveled, wearing only undershorts. High beams hardly helped. “It’s only vapor,” she said aloud, rolling out of the drive. It felt like molasses. 21 �Slow birds swinging low, then soaring upwards toward the navy light. She scanned the rear-view mirror. The last time, just as she’d approached the tunnel, someone had cut her off, almost causing an accident. ❍ Not a beer belly. Which is hard. Like an accessory or lump. No. The mist’s billows were more like the soft rolls of a fat man’s stomach, tubular and large as they flair from the groin. Fog was thick all over the city. “HEAVY MIST ON BRIDGE” flashed in neon on the beltway. Even so, traffic flowed smoothly. She’d glanced up at the sky. Tremulous smoke spewed from — she’d thought a building, but nothing was burning. No sirens, no flames. “What could it be?” she murmured to herself. She had never seen fog so boisterous. Fog developed throughout much of the San Francisco Bay region Sunday night and has continued into the Monday morning commute hours. Visibilities of 1/4 mile or less have been reported at several locations. Areas of dense fog are expected to continue through about 10 A.M. this morning. 22 �Visibility in fog can suddenly drop to near zero making traveling hazardous at any speed. Be prepared for sudden visibility changes. Drivers should use low beam headlights and allow extra time to reach their destination. The newspapers were covered. Except in the higher wind-sheltered valleys, fog prevailed across the bay. Listening carefully she could hear the shriveled berries from her neighbor’s hollies rolling around the driveway. She nestled into her robe, scrunching her feet in a woolen throw. “Strange. I missed the whole thing!” That morning she had gotten up before dawn and driven straight through the fog bank. Of course she had noticed damp, eerie, highly volatile mounds, but she had just assumed that that was the way it always was. Lights from other cars had made the lanes easy enough to see. She would never have guessed that the situation was building to a crisis. 23 �The sun cup “The sun cup,” said the writer, “is in the eveningprimrose family. Sprawled flat on the ground in a rosette of leaves, it is among the earliest flowers of spring.” She had been reading the bulletin while standing in a post office line. A Monarch, a swallowtail, a bumblebee and big black beetle hovered around a feather. “Only on the coast from southwest Oregon to San Luis Obispo, and only where soil, sun and moisture mix in perfect sun-cup combination has this flower been able to survive, “ the botanist continued. While its yellow petals glow, its seeds lie buried in a sturdy capsule. ❍ She peered out at the new grass. “The hill is awake! Or beginning to awaken,” she corrected herself. It had been dead for a long time. Soft breeze. Mudflats and the birds of the mudflats, their smell so fresh and distinctly springlike. A Monarch flapped around a tree. Will the eucalyptus last? She’d read that they, along with three kinds of ivy, threatened the hill’s rich oak forest. 24 �Rapacious thornless blackberry vines threatened the willows along the creek. If residents cut them just before blossoming, the plants would “lose heart,” the bulletin had stressed. Their rallying-power was limited and concerned citizens needed to capitalize on that weakness if they wanted to save their rare orchids and Nootka roses, for example. Out of 134 native plants (including 2 orchids, 3 different roses and 7 kinds of fern), 8 may have already disappeared and several others had only a few remaining specimens. She was worried about “her” hill — its flower-filled meadows, thickets and tree-lined riparian corridors. She lay back. A virile pinaceous scent of the sweet trees lining her drive plus the fragrant flowering wild white Pink wafted through her window. From a distance the meadow looked patched with snow. 25 �A few drops A few drops splashed against the glass. The weatherman said rain and here it was. A slight breeze had, a few hours earlier, carried the smell of spring. Darkening sky and now a full-fledged downpour brought the season home. One bird chirped. A moan almost. Had she heard it before? It seemed to be coming from her bushes. ❍ Her dream in the turbulent night, sprawled, under sea, though the sea was housed. Its mansions covered blocks, rolling hills, flowered valleys, tree-lined slopes. Water-full rooms themselves held aquariums — odd little coral fish with lacy serene bodies. Human inhabitants, one or two. All care-takers of sorts. All silent. She, a guest, drifted across the august grounds. A cruel wind blew. Gray fungus, like drooping beards, and creepers recondite in the native forest. The air was filled with the scent of plants. ❍ Dawn’s pale light eased over the carpet. Bitter air blew across the hill, puffed the faded jacket of an old Chinese 26 �woman. She looked sad. And terribly foreign. Black cap, bangs, but too old for bangs. Too heavy. (Her lumbered stride.) The dove’s moan lingered, beyond the eaves, above the shrieks of coarser appetites. The buzzing she’d been feeling in the center of her forehead, for days unassailable, now gone. A distant shower, its blue slanting streak, arose far away, across the horizon. Her dark eyes scanned the sea and the bare trunks of trees. ❍ “We have ants in our kitchen,” groused a young Japanese mother to her condominium’s manager, a surly man, with few “people skills.” He passed her on to Mrs. King. Mrs. King was president of the Homeowner’s Association. Monthly meetings were optional, but, unfortunately for the mother, it was here that quotidian concerns found their rightful airing. Overhearing this, her mind, for no reason at all, leapt to someone who, when asked what he “did,” answered that he worked in advertising. While technically this was true, his real job was sales rep. He made the round of drug stores and pharmaceuticals introducing 27 �pharmacists to new brands of medicines. Since the average person had little information when it came to selecting the right antihistamine, for example, clerks were often solicited for a recommendation. Clerks knew what their sales rep told them. This man’s job was to sweet talk clerks. 28 �On the fourth floor On the fourth floor was a sunny room with plants and women sleeping. On sofas, on rugs, in armchairs, in hammocks. The center provided this space explicitly for rest. Women are tired, they’d said. ❍ A cool breeze sloughed its way through the late August afternoon. “Go on. Get up. Get on with you now,” (urged its unforgiving mother). It limped along. Not quite ready. A young breeze. Her young nasturtiums likewise were toppling. Once they had sprouted they shot up strong, a little belligerent, jockeying their way toward the sun. First one fell. Now the other six were cowing. “The thought of flowers weighs them down,” she persuaded herself. She bent over the pot where seven days before she had planted seven seeds. “Germination takes eight days,” the package had said. She had wondered how it could be so exact. She had bought the seeds after reading an article on nasturtiums featuring many wildly-colored examples. “What stunning flowers!” she had thought. As a child she had not liked nasturtiums. Before she’d read the article, she’d considered them a nuisance. 29 �“I’ll take these,” she’d said selecting a small bag of gourmet-looking pellets. Her excitement was uncharacteristic. It was also uncharacteristic for her to choose seeds over seedlings. Skinny stems, snappy petals, billowy leaves straggling over the clay pot’s edge. The directions had said, “Do not feed for flusher flowering.” “Good,” she thought. “They want neglect.” “Annuals.” It meant they would bloom and die. But she couldn’t picture it. More likely they’d bloom, die out for the season, then rebloom the next spring. “But that’s what ‘perennials’ do!” she blushed. ❍ She gazed across her room. From the window rose the sound of wheels bumping against the courtyard path. “Mail time,” she thought, glancing at her watch. It was almost six. “Six is like tomorrow!” she inwardly screamed. From the time she’d moved in, delivery had been an irritant. But she was tired of getting upset. She had dutifully filed a complaint with the city’s postal service. A very slow man had recorded all the minutiae and assigned her a case number. That was months before. 30 �Her thoughts veered to another incident, which (like the mail) had excessively affected her. At the home of a friend she had seen a rectangular bottle plugged with a large cork. “Czechoslovakian cut glass,” her friend had said, empathizing with her visitor’s awe. Its distinctive emerald shade was impossible to duplicate. However, it wasn’t just the color, though its luster and clarity were certainly unusual. Each of the glass’s tiny indentations had acted as a mirror. When light reflected off of them, especially soft late-afternoon light, a trajectory of objects (in varying sizes and intensity) had gleamed through its prisms. A cigarette lighter, for example, swaggered in glowing curvatures as its black engraved initials danced hula-like through the dust-filled living room air. Looking at it from the viewpoint of her velvet chair, she had felt a surge of energy well up. ❍ Reading The Sound of the Mountains by the Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata had brought to her attention the fact that she was more impressionable than she’d thought. The degree to which the characters in the book wrestled inside her — for days a part of her consciousness remained absorbed and distracted — 31 �was quite alarming. Shingo, for example, age 62, around whom the story revolved, held the image of a girl, now dead, to whom he was attracted in his youth, closer to his heart than the members of the family he had borne by marrying her considerably less handsome sister. As a result of his passivity, the marriages of both his children were flawed. Even now, as head of the family, he ought to intervene on their behalf, yet time goes by and he does nothing. As wanton acts of his grandchildren caused the death or near death of others, his own part in it shocked and immobilized him. The cumulative effect, for example, of his preference for his son, out and out favoring him over his disappointingly homely daughter, pointed an accusing finger toward him, Shingo, in the lunatic behavior of his daughter’s even homelier offspring. This understanding arose not so much as a thought as a gradual accretion whittling away at his conscience. For days now, like Shingo, she had felt a mounting disparity between her actions and her confidence. Repercussions of one’s smallest deed she realized (and can an interchange with another ever he considered small?) reverberate to infinity. There is only one opportunity to exert control and that is over the initial idea. One must be vigilant about one’s state of mind and she wondered if she had the energy. “Merely thinking these things 32 �does nothing,” she muttered out loud as she straightened the house, fluffing the pillows and emptying the wastebaskets. “That is precisely what Shingo does!” ❍ “The way the human beings carry out each others’ unconscious lives can be staggering,” she mused as she toted a rather light load of groceries home from the grocery store. “Shuichi, for example, newly married to sweet and lovely Kikuko, blatantly goes out on her. Meanwhile, his father, scrupulous even in his dreams about remaining faithful to his homely wife, has longed for her sister who died at the peak of intense, and for Shingo compelling, beauty. It was the sister he had wanted to marry and one supposes that it was the gesture to remain connected with her that after her death he married her less attractive sibling. Even the memories of her that he and Yasuko share, Shingo remains silent about. Thus he presents himself as someone who long ago cared whereas in truth the image of Yasuko’s beautiful sister is rarely far from his mind. Was it on the altar of the palpable though well-manicured passion of the father that the son sacrificed the fidelity of his own marriage vows, not really understanding this, not really choosing, and not really being chastised by his father who on some level ‘got’ that this was an enactment of his own unfinished emotional business, however inept 33 �and aborted? Kinu, the other woman, of lower class and education, exacted the greatest authority. Helpless though she was to change the misguided circumstances of her husband’s death, when it came to Shuichi she was pretty much the master, at times flagrantly so.” ❍ It would be easy to criticize Shingo for his procrastination. His wife certainly did. Yet one sees in her very criticism a shortsightedness that is pitiful. Shingo’s paralysis, indeed sometimes it did seem to take these proportions, objectively was inexcusable, yet he had found himself using this very term, paralysis, regarding his son’s moral and emotional life. Shingo, unable to move forward, was at least the more conscientious. With information surging through him at such a pace, immobility was fortitude. Taking action before one is ready, forecloses and thereby stunts. “It can actually be cowardly,” she was thinking out loud. The connection between action and cowardliness (which heretofore she had associated with inaction) startled her. 34 �Is it raining? “Is it raining?” She thought she felt a drop. The day had been clear. In fact, though it was only January, there had been a moment earlier when it had actually felt like spring. “How could it be raining already?” she blurted out, glancing at the hill. The night before she had turned on the television, for the news presumably, but really to hear the weather forecast: The system that brought wintry weather to the deep South yesterday will push off into the Atlantic bringing breezy and cool conditions [it began]. High pressure will provide sunny to partly cloudy skies for most of the West. “They’re always wrong,” she’d reminded herself, validating her instinct to distrust the very report she had stayed up late to watch. One drop and then another grazed her arm. She was leaning over the edge of her porch, admiring a row of lilies the gardeners had put in. None of them were blooming, but the lively green of their straight-backed leaves was splendid against the russet mulch. The gardeners were Mexican. They chatted in Spanish as they worked. This year they had installed an elaborate 35 �sprinkling system over whose nighttime purr she had already grown quite fond. She looked more closely at the hill, its jaundiced mud, sickly, too shiny, moments from sliding away from itself. “One more drop could be disaster,” she thought, peering again at the sky. “There it is. There’s the rain.” Her upstairs neighbor banged his window shut. She couldn’t hear his wife’s response. Once a spigot had broken. Water gushed onto her porch around three a.m. She had lain there wondering what the pounding could possibly be when it had stopped, suddenly, and she had fallen back to sleep. The next night it happened again. Even though she got up and turned on the porch light, she could see nothing of the source of the water. 36 �Snow fell softly Snow fell softly on the dark curly road. She stood in the doorway, pressed between the room’s warm glow and the street’s empty whiteness. Flanked by sleep, by the still-silent night, she slipped between the stars and sheer hard glass like the first person on earth. (Slip-skating a delicate swoop down the road’s center.) Silence warmed. Powdery snow splayed across the world (air-brushing the world) as if to obliterate the previous canvas. She grabbed the sky and shook it. Smudges of cinders. One with a little boot. ❍ It was New Year’s Day. She could stay in her room and listen to the lovely drops endlessly falling. She gazed at the walls. Her room was a veritable fabric museum. Stray pieces from who knows where hung from every available precipice. Spareness, as an aesthetic, leaves out the human being she had discovered. There it was. A yellow post-it. Sticking out from the side of her book like a tongue. 37 �Probably it was not at all the point that Kawabata was making, but she couldn’t help noticing the consistency with which his hero misinterpreted seemingly transparent comments of his heroine. Her remark about the snow on Mount Fuji’s summit, for example. Snowy white, it melded with the clouds, both contrasting with an overcast sky. Multiple times he extrapolated on the implications of her intentions toward him, based on her reportage of the previous day’s news article, whereas she had made clear — “You didn’t? You must not get the paper we get.” — that she took for granted that he had read the same thing. ❍ She had awakened before dawn, a pitch black Saturday. The characters in her book (old lovers who had not seen each other for years) were spending a night at an inn. The room they had been assigned had a grove in its garden. One entire wall was shaded by leaves. Neither of them knew the names of the trees but gazing at the expansive trunks jutting up against their verandah had helped them relax. She imagined the two of them sprawled out in their kimonos, enjoying the eucalyptus or possibly 38 �redwoods. She pictured redwoods. Gnarly limbs with soft reddish bark. The day, finally, a rainy winter one, had turned quietly back to darkness. ❍ “This year seemed quieter,” she thought, referring to the holidays, but even as she thought it, she sensed she may have felt similarly last year. Still, they were over and she was glad. To gaze at the hill or shut her eyes and just enjoy the afternoon sun . . . which suddenly spread, lifted its face and blazed brightly. She sat very still. It had rained all week. She coveted her brief outdoor moment. Like butter, the softness extremely pleasurable. A Monarch, huge and alone, was flopping around a tree. A phone rang. Not hers. Earlier she had again been feeling critical of Kawabata’s obsession with inns and lovers (his ubiquitous intriguing woman) when it dawned on her how “in his stride” he seemed. Could it be that writers had one or two subjects within the scope of which they worked out their artistic task? 39 �Stealthily, like a cat Stealthily, like a cat. Morning fog wove in and out of her vision. “Am I sane?” One minute she could easily see ahead of her. The next, cars wobbled across her lane. It reminded her of the way she massaged her thoughts (a habit she’d become aware of recently). One would arise. She’d kneaded it, modeled it, remodeled it — not obsessively but gently — till it released some subtle information. She had been reading about postures that explored the gamut of one’s body-architecture. Each person may inhabit all forms and shapes but typically selects only a few. New poses encourage new self alignment (physically, like thought-massaging did mentally, she’d concluded). She had been doing yoga, folding forward, enjoying the clean scent exuding from her tights. Indeed, she remembered the precise moment. ❍ “Peacocks,” he’d said, “both kill and eat poisonous snakes.” He’d smiled enigmatically. “So the posture in their name is about digestion.” As soon as he’d said that she recalled her dream. 40 �The shop of her favorite clothing designer was having a sale. She had been excited to attend but when she got there felt embarrassed by the scarcity of items. There were several rooms with wooden floors and many tables set up, but most of them were bare. The feeling was not that they had already sold a lot. Rather that they had very little to sell. In the dream, she’d connected this sense of barrenness with the terrorists’ attack on Manhattan’s Trade Center. She thought she had heard that the designer’s entire fall line (which originated in New York) had had to be cancelled. Since none of the proprietors seemed concerned, she felt reluctant to draw it to their attention. She’d wandered into the back where she found a beautiful gold silk blouse. Draped on a table over a similar one in silver, both looked lovely against the dark mahogany. She had been holding the gold one up to her chest, checking the mirror to see if it would suit her, when the salesperson she knew best said, “Don’t buy that.” She hadn’t explained why. She felt crushed but lacked the courage to argue with this person. Her alarm had rung just as she “got” that she “got” to buy nothing. Nevertheless, the dream left a deep sense of satisfaction. “What a pleasurable dream,” she’d 41 �thought as she washed and dressed. But she’d forgotten about it till the teacher mentioned peacocks. Later, in class, he’d asked for blankets. Everyone else already had one. As she’d made her way over to the shelf, she realized that earlier in her dream, she had also walked over to shelves fondling stacks (literally roll upon roll) of very dark, velvety-looking blankets. Since her dream shelves had been on the opposite side of the room, when she’d approached these real shelves, it seemed as if she were going the wrong way. Suddenly the teacher had used the word “snot.” Before he’d said this she had been in a daze. ❍ Sparrows in the rain. Their lively voices conjuring a sward, swings, children swinging (beside a row of flowers). Opening her eyes, a dreary hill stared her down. An image that stayed with her, strangely (because she had neither used it nor enjoyed it), was the yard of the house in which she had grown up — a patch of grass, a tree, flowers along the back. She’d rarely swung on the swings. While she’d carved her initials in the tree, she 42 �much preferred climbing, playing, keeping close tabs on the amazing one across the street. Knitting on the porch in the early morning light or on long summer afternoons beneath the slow ceiling fan. She had enjoyed that. (That porch overlooked leggy, shallow-colored zinnias.) Above it was another whose cot she’d used on unbearably hot nights. Were it not for its screen, she could have pet the tree. It smelled heavenly and through its limbs she’d watched the sky, stars, moon, drifting clouds. She had been driving in a car, slowing heading toward an intersection. A large white limousine in front of her had already stopped. It was a little to her left so that she could easily see its driver and the fact that it was empty except for piles of bed-rolls and sleeping bags in the back. Mesmerized by the woman, she’d followed her into a side street. The woman pulled onto a rack (like the kind one sees at an automotive repair shop). She was still positioned to this woman’s right thus blocked from turning left, the way she needed to turn and the only way the street (which had dead-ended) allowed one to turn. As it dawned on her that she was trapped, helpless to take care of an impending emergency, she woke up. 43 �Once when she’d come home from school she’d found her mother lying on the couch, reading and eating brownies. That was one thing. Another was baking cookies, liking the dough even more than the cookies, though they smelled yummy. “Is there anything else? Think hard.” “Do you remember turtles?” “O my God! I adored, absolutely loved them.” The dickey her mother recently sent her randomly came to mind. As a child she had worn dickeys with dyed-to-match sweaters. Mostly they were white with a textured finish, sometimes embroidered. A bottomless flap of approximately the same size slipped beneath the sweater’s neck. She recalled liking them but feeling sloppy when she actually had one on. The under part tended to sneak out and swing around so that its front ended up on the side or at least crooked. This new dickey was more like a sleeveless blouse with a cropped waist and no side-seams. But what stood out in her mind (the thought that she kept massaging) had been what was revealed to her 44 �about her mother’s vision of her neck looking so much “nicer” covered. Indeed, her mother had referred to her “long slender neck” in the negative (as if it were a fault) whereas she had always been proud of her neck. If anything, the dickey was a nuisance, hiding her neck and itching a little. 45 �Daylight vanished Daylight vanished in a swirl of brumous clouds. Through her stained-glass window she had watched them cruise, screening the stars, like brooding ghosts. The smack of sheet on an upstairs banister whipped then twirled into an argument with itself. Marsh grass dozed in the heavy air. Exhaustion from the day drained with the light and she fell asleep. So soundly. Into the pit of silence. Gulls. Their raucous laugh unheard, though high, through the brackish air. She slept and dreamed of seabirds, rising, falling, mingling in shards of crashing sky-hewn waves. A tooled container, half-sunken near a sandbar, bobbed its oily spillage. The sky scudded past. Spasms of chimes in a powdery wind. A sour smell, a soft mysterious rattling, awakened her. Before her child wakes, a mother mentally makes the shift. When his shadow sleeps, hers pauses. The stirring of his shadow presses against her stillpoints (like a soft admonishing hand). Space opens in her skull between two waves where she prepares to cradle her son’s awakeness. 46 �❍ The mist alive, so fresh on the green lawn. First light as it spread across the patio. Not her patio. “Who sits on these redwood chairs,” she wondered. (The table in between with its pot of bulbs and pleasant view.) Mountains humped the sky, a little like cows all brown and white and loafing. Moo. Moo. Leisurely absorbing new sun. A deer and then its children — one, two graceful bones out on the glade. The smallest sucked a leaf. (The wandering mother in a moment of reprieve as her offspring fed.) Chewing, nodding, trying a drier bunch, a harder-toreach, greener bunch. (Deer nibble strawberries toward the echo of day-laborers.) A memory arose of her mother’s childlike body, sweet, like a roasted potato. ❍ Birds madly roosting. Their clamor. In its abrupt absence, her mother’s lazy voice saying, “I don’t know” in answer to a question about her husband’s illness. 47 �Her mother, usually an alert, extremely clever woman, over matters that concerned the health of the person about whom she says “When he goes, I go” suddenly went dumb. “I don’t know,” she drawled at any query more complicated than the time and place of his surgery. She was not even sure what organ was being operated on. The peculiar quality of her “I don’t know,” a sleepy yawn, more appropriate to a premature “What would you like for breakfast?” — the tone conveying, “It’s too early to tell” superimposed on “Don’t rush me. Come back later.” “Her daze is probably an inability to cope,” she scolded herself. “She can’t face what might happen, so she doesn’t.” But her mother’s unconsciousness bothered her. She had been too damaged by it to remain impartial. ❍ Cheep. Cheep. She woke to the smell of spring. A surge of joy — just before the (green and foreign) longing for her mother. Who’d been fond of telling stories. Recently she’d told one of a child who’d fed squirrels. Only to be bitten. 48 �The little girl had had to drag herself home, squirrel hanging from her bloody and dismembered fingers. “I know someone who sews twelve hours a day,” her mother had added. “She sews on paper then photographs the paper. She’d sew on wood if she could.” ❍ It was upon comparing the portrait she had made as a tribute to her recently dead mother with Nakamura Tsune’s Portrait of His Aged Mother that her insight slowly began to emerge. Whereas her portrait, sketched from an early photograph of her mother, made her mother seem younger and even more beautiful than she actually had been at the time the photograph had been taken, Tsune’s, completed while his mother was still alive, had been done in a simple style with dark, cold coloring. His stooped, emaciated woman, seated in profile against a half-wainscoted wall, prayer beads dangling from her wrinkled fingers, probably reflected Tsune’s feelings toward his own approaching death. Her painting, on the other hand, done while grieving the loss of her mother, her lover, and their miscarried baby, seemed shallow and selfindulgent by comparison. Which was odd. How could one explain the fact that she, with her triple sorrow, had painted a sort of sweet, 49 �pretty likeness void of any sense of pain, while Tsune, whose mother yet lived, had conveyed his suffering starkly and profoundly? It must be that both of them, choosing as their ostensible subject the aging and death of their mothers, had actually been painting selfportraits. Even as she thought this, the memory of her frequent glances in the mirror to check the contours of her face as she had painted, rose vividly before her. At the time she had rationalized this tactic by reminding herself of the strong resemblance she bore to her mother. Her musings brought up the question of the degree to which one’s love for others is in reality a form of selflove. In her situation, for example, all three persons mourned were fully alive within her. Her experience of them therefore had to be affected by her ever-changing experience of herself. Somehow the part she played, perpetually infusing them with life, had never occurred to her. The two pieces of this that were most disturbing (and suggested that her behavior had been driven to a much larger degree than she cared to admit by a form of narcissism) were first her portrayal of her dead mother as young and beautiful, insisting on this, in fact leaving any trace of death out of the painting altogether, and second the conviction to which she had been quite 50 �wedded of having lugged another around in her heart for a quarter of a century, when more accurately the weight she had borne had been a split-off part of her own psyche. Reflecting on the former (and taking a lesson from Tsune), she couldn’t help but feel that her sole purpose in having created that portraiture was to perpetuate her mother’s function as mirror to the beauty and youth she herself had been terrified of losing. Her mother was dead. If the painting had been about her mother, it would have had to include something on this subject. But wait. Within the striking image she had drawn of her young, beautiful mother, an ardent brunette, spunky, feisty — within the glamour and sweet smells, exotic and exciting, had there not lurked a whirlwind of life force expending itself to keep itself alive? One could argue, given her own circumstance of extreme vigor at the time of her mother’s death, that this had been the side of death with which she was most familiar — the only side in fact that she could have painted with authenticity. Just as a giant red balloon contains within its sheath of air a shriveled knot of rubber that one instinctively tosses (and that this is evident to the eyes of an observer if she will only see it) — metaphorically speaking, this explained what was happening to her now. She was beginning to see it. 51 �The case of her lover (or “ex-lover” — it was difficult to call him that since her inner world belied it) was more complex. A part of her perfectly understood that he lived with his wife and three children in a travel-to-able city. But did he infuse her as she infused him with abundant, exuberant life? Did she owe the very transformation she was presently undergoing to the power of his imagination? She wondered. As in a dream whose various figures represent various aspects of the dreamer, so in this “relationship” it must be that its various aspects, fashioned though they were on external originals, had nevertheless, over the course of years, quietly melded into the character of their maker. Lovers though they may have been in the past, their hearts had flowed along separate streams of time. The qualities she once admired in him were her qualities now — the “him” she thought of herself as loving, a mental “balloon” inflated with devotion that would as surely shrivel the second she withdrew it. 52 �The air was cold The air was cold and the sun, crystal clear on the sparkling grass. She stepped out on the porch. The cold was steady, reliable. A strong thing. A rushing sound (not rain) wandered through the trees. It ran along the ground, in the shrubs and tilted grass. It rustled and rattled just above the earth. It grew cooler. The hill itself looked drier, harder. A bleak wind lashed overhead. Then the sun fell. Color and smell faded from the hill. The meadow lay wasted. The weather, a negation of weather. ❍ February to her seemed crammed with undigested leftovers. Even for the birds. They bumped heads. “Birds usually ship-shape into a perfect V,” she thought. “They seem rushed,” she said to the tinted glass. She’d been gazing out at the bushes. Bunched snow in winter sat (softly) composed. Did not buckle but melted under fair skies. 53 �Spring was palpable, even from her window. Like a jittery child is calmed by satin (holding a piece in its little sleeping fist), so the winter sky with its softer, sweeter middle. Oakland sat softly. Acres of cement with bits of green and a dowdy cloud-covering. “At least the blackbirds abscond the clot” she found herself thinking, pitying the snaking traffic. Restless wings, wild, without form, vomiting themselves out of existence. A bevy of birds, flapping — frantically was it — or did it merely seem so to her whom their sheer numbers had taken by surprise? “Are they larks?” She knew she didn’t care. (Such an annoying habit.) Watching them careen about the sky, so black and hollow. (The growling in their throats and stomachs.) A friend had given her an article on ducks. Observing ducks swim in bitterly cold water, a reader had asked why their exposed legs — why didn’t their blood solidify? “Small birds enter a nightly torpor,” the ornithologist began. “Some (like goldfinches and redpolls) grow extra feathers and fluff them out. Some shiver. Some shiver almost continuously to generate enough body heat.” 54 �As for the legs of ducks, their surface veins constrict shunting blood toward their warm central arteries. She found herself engrossed. Fascinated. She had no idea that she was even interested. ❍ Rain again. It had rained every day for weeks and people were starting to complain. “I know they’re here,” she muttered as she scoured the floor under her winter coats. It was hard to see what was back there. Naked, chilly, in the far reaches of her crowded closet (her guttural, exasperated grunt). She had been straightening her room and its little porch. When she’d gotten to her failing-to-thrive nasturtiums (a small tree was waiting in the sidelines), instead of lugging the soggy, mud-filled pot down the hallway and several flights of stairs, she had picked it up and thrown it over the railing. She remembered hearing it land. Deliberately not looking. More evident was the pristine state of her porch, suddenly emptied of the obstacle to her new tree. 55 �❍ “Aren’t they late?” she muttered to herself. A pair of doves waddled about. The lilies were sodden after last night’s storm and no birds sang. She cracked her egg-top as she watched some leaflets flutter to the ground. An hour ago she had decided to sleep one more hour. When she had enough, something softened inside. She felt alert but — she’d almost said slow — but more accurately it was grounded or simply calm. 56 �After all “After all, Saint John’s was originally a German house,” said Brother Leonard who had decorated one of the many Christmas trees in the Benedictine Abbey entirely with cookies. He began in October and had baked nearly 1200 cookies. Another monk had photographed the nine-foot blue spruce taken from the Abbey’s woods. Its branches were covered with animals, swirls, and leaves. The tree, beside a very small fireplace, seemed cluttered and poorly planned. ❍ The tawny hill. Such was its flank, the creek mostly dried grass. “Creeks are important,” she’d thought, remembering the morning she’d laid on the barn’s lean-to. Red maple fingers had been like a priest’s, the chattering water, prayer. But this creek lacked excitement. (Not much water, no personality.) Swing, jungle-gym, sandbox, slide, jerry-rigged on a patch of grass. A man played ball with his little boy. Probably for the boy it was nice to be with his daddy, but looking on, her heart felt flat. 57 �Portions of the bay likewise weighed in less than inspiring. Mirroring a deadness in her no doubt. Sometimes just moving was too much. It seemed impossible to get up from a chair, for example, to get in bed or leave for anywhere. Even talking. Increasingly she wanted not to. (The awareness of words, wasted, violated or used nervously.) A train whizzed by. A stroke of sunlit sky, floundering, anchorless, seemed out of place in the placid winter. ❍ It is possible that a full understanding of what had happened in those few hours on the train to the hot spring would diminish its meaning. And that would be a shame. For Shimamura’s idle life lacked meaning (reading along she knew he knew it — it was some small shred of meaning in search of which he’d made his solitary trips). It had occurred so unexpectedly, in transit, time usually hazed away. Hindsight, however, and distance had set the incident in bold relief. His first trip to the snow country had been in the summer. As he’d left Tokyo, he remembered, his wife had cautioned him that it was egg-laying season for moths. Indeed there were moths — large corn-colored ones 58 �under the eaves clinging to a decorative lantern. In his dressing-room also a queer-looking moth lay motionless, seemingly glued to the screen. Against the crimson glow of the mountain ranges, its gossamer wings fluttered in the wind. Transfixed, Shimamura had rubbed his hand vigorously over the inside of the screen. When the moth hadn’t moved, he’d struck the screen with his fist. Sure enough it loosened and, like a leaf, wafted to the ground. On his return (it had been December) he was startled to see the station master’s face stuffed inside a muffler, the flaps of his cap turned down over his ears. As soon as the train pulled up at the signal stop, a girl, who had been sitting on the other side of the car, opened the window in Shimamura’s section and called to him loudly. Shimamura found himself unavoidably involved in their conversation, as if some critical piece of drama whose every nuance pertained to him was being acted out for his benefit. Perhaps it was in part the contrast between her beauty and the desolation of the border range that so entranced him. This region of Japan, which he had chosen both for its remoteness and its hot springs (whose geisha, he reasoned, would protect him from excessive loneliness), was reputed to be the snowiest in the world. Throughout the winter, cold winds from 59 �Siberia picked up moisture over the Japan Sea and dropped it as snow when they struck the central mountain range. Frozen blankets spread endlessly over the bleak horizon. With little to relieve the monotony, one’s life, hibernal, seemingly divorced from time, might easily sink into an undifferentiated darkness. What registered with Shimamura after the girl drew herself back from the window was not so much the brightness of her voice (its high resonance) as the pathos conveyed by it. Her concern apparently was for her brother who, though hardly more than a boy, was living and working in this town. The station master seemed to know them both. Possibly because of the cold, he was trying to cut the conversation short, while the girl, sounding urgent, pressed for details of her brother’s welfare. Shimamura couldn’t tell if she was hurt by the station master’s curtness or simply, in her own excitement, hadn’t noticed it. In either case she had struck him as sad. Was it sadness then that attracted him — (indeed, attracted her, for she was bound up with his story). When she was seated, his view of her, depending as it did on a combination of the shifting light (both inside and outside the train) and the image of her cast by the partially steamed window-glass, was illusive. From her place, across the aisle and one section removed, she 60 �would have had no way of guessing that she was being observed. Even had she happened to glance his way, she could not have seen her own reflection and would have no reason to question the behavior of a man who appeared to be staring out the window at the countryside. Since she was diagonally opposite to him, Shimamura knew he could just as easily have looked at her directly. A certain quality in her beauty — starkly cool, fierce, unreal — warned him against this. As if her purpose, karmic and foreboding, was to mirror something in himself that he preferred not to see. Truly odd was his awareness, on the one hand, of the suffering implied by her close connection with her traveling companion, an invalid, someone to whom she seemed mysteriously bound, and on the other, of the fact that his reaction to the two of them was as it would have been to a dreamlike pantomime (the distortion of them produced by the window’s glare lent them an otherworldly quality) rather than as one would expect it to be toward human beings in pain. Her overearnestness — both with the sick man (her constant ministrations — rearranging his scarf and the bottom of his overcoat that slipped open again and again so that even he, Shimamura, grew impatient) as well as earlier with the station master — aroused in his imagination a 61 �ritualized figure from an old romantic tale where powerful feelings were metaphoric rather than an ordinary woman in the throes of anguish. He found it deeply disturbing that this inability (for he had come to consider it a kind of inability, having observed like failures in feeling in himself on numerous previous occasions) was being held up for him to watch. Shimamura continued to peer out the glass. Streaks of red flushed the evening sky casting an eerie shadow over the terrain. Equally eerie and superimposed on his window-view of the reddish landscape were the incandescent figures of the girl and the invalid. The silhouettes, though not motionless, held their position in the frame created by the window, while the landscape, a kind of unmitigated emotion, droned steadily past them. When he relaxed his gaze, it seemed as if the mountains had been cut off by the outline of the reflected forms (progressing around them), but when he made a conscious effort to look, peering into their filmlike shapes, he could see that the vista was actually whizzing through them. It almost stopped his breath, this furtive glimpse of what might be their inner emotional reality. When a light somewhere out in the mountains coruscated in the center of the girl’s face, then moved across her face shooting a single ray through the pupil of her eye, for that moment her eye became a weirdly glowing phosphorescent jewel 62 �on a sea of scarlet. Shimamura, mesmerized by the inexpressible beauty of it, came to forget that he was confronting a mirror. The girl’s face and the dim mountains melted together into a symbolic world (his own interior world?) of opaque coldness. 63 �After a week After a week of winter days, summer was back. Mist dribbled through the leaves, cooling down the shrubbery and scraggily bushes lining the roadside. Black plastic bags (bulging stomachs fastened at the neck) dotted the curb. Every few paces was a bumptious bag — “that could be a baby tree” she thought — but that she knew was trash. Fourth-of-July confetti. Was it a tribute to the cold that it took the city a fortnight to clean up the mess left by the celebrations? Certainly the weather had been dismal since that last auspicious day and serene night. Her street had been cluttered with shredded paper. Earlier she had noticed a covey of orange-vested men clucking around the narrow strip where most of the refuse had collected. Huddled together in the sun, they neither worked nor rested. Yet their aimless movements carried a charge. Thus the tidy bundles surprised her, their perkiness, like haystacks (all teepeed up), strangely fulfilling. Between each bag, grass in the nubile light. ❍ She didn’t know what she felt reading about Yuji Nakamura whose bum knee kicked in as he ran the second 64 �and longest leg of the 130-mile Hakone Ekiden relay. He’d hobbled and grimaced till his coach finally said, “You’re out!” His teammates, wearing yellow sashes of dishonor, simply ran their paces to the end. Fifteen 10-member, all-male squads from Japanese universities compete in the grueling New Year’s Day race, the article explained. Water is permitted once each relay leg, roughly at 10 kilometers (the halfway point). Millions line the asphalt route from downtown Tokyo to the resort town of Hakone. Millions more watch from their homes. While there are no superheroes in the ekiden (a superhuman performance by one runner will not guarantee a win), anyone who lets the team down shoulders an overwhelming responsibility. A runner who gets sick, injured or for any reason fails to complete his “leg,” often finds that the race haunts him forever, ruining his career, even his life. Historical failures are dredged up annually on television and magazines. Nakamura, the reporter noted, had considered suicide. “I was so sad, had so many regrets and was in shock because I’d done something from which I could never redeem myself.” 65 �While ekidens are now run all over the world (with races tailored for high schoolers, girls, professional squads and so forth), the Hakone Ekiden, journalists say, borders on the sadistic. One leg is up a paralyzing hill. The next, coming down, is brutal on the knees. Runners battle snow, ice, heavy wind, freezing rain and don’t give up, for there are no substitutions once the race starts. They will kill themselves delivering the tasuki even one second faster. If any runner falls more than 10 minutes behind the leader, the entire team forfeits. A disqualified team automatically forfeits its berth in the following year’s race. “I must not stop — even if I die,” is the feeling of most runners. Doryoku (effort) — an end in itself — is said to be the ultimate motivation. The philosophy stresses endless training, dedication, team-spirit, obedience and selfsacrifice. Instead of letting athletes quit when they tire, coaches turn up the heat, continuing to drill to the point of exhaustion. “Gambare!” (fight harder) fans scream cheering runners on. Which ratchets up the pressure. When marathoner Kokichi Tsuburaya won a bronze medal, he apologized for letting his country down. 66 �❍ She gazed out the window. If the truth were told, though the report of the Master’s retirement game had been serialized in an exhaustive sixty-four installments, she was only now, through more heuristic means, beginning to grasp the momentous nature of this occasion. No one could have been more respectful, more knowledgeable, more observant nor sparing of himself in his reportage than Uragami whose newspaper, the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun, had sponsored the match and whose devotion to Honnimbo Shusai had been entire. Yet, having read what he had to say (admittedly years later), she felt that the account, focused primarily on externals, served rather to elegize (lament) than to parse (examine closely) the illusive events for posterity. For example she learned that the match itself, lasting fourteen sessions, began in Tokyo on June 26, 1938 and ended, not quite six months later, on December 4, in Ito. The Master had died on January 18, 1940. Most certainly the ordeal had taken his life. But such facts told her little. Their very paucity aroused a strange interest in minutiae (like the very long hair Uragami had noticed in the Master’s left eyebrow), as if something ultimate in one’s understanding hinged on getting these details correct. Mr. Uragami himself had 67 �said that his noticing the hair and writing about it had been a trifling matter. The important point was that he had noticed it at a difficult moment — that it had come as a sort of rescue. But such thinking was apocryphal and now that she realized it, her inclination was to extrapolate — to posit that hidden within this single feature of the Master’s visage (a sort of metaphysical heirloom/philosopher’s stone?) had been an elixir with transmutative properties compensatory to her own age’s precise shortcomings. Buried in Uragami’s treatment of a day’s session at Hakone was the following brief paragraph: Today I discovered for the first time a white hair about an inch long in the Master’s eyebrow. Standing out from the swollen-eyed, heavy veined face, it too somehow came as a savior. Several days after this article had appeared (and two days before he had died) the Master and his wife had made a trip to Atami to get the Master a shave. Phoning a reliable barber, the Master had told him that he had one very long hair in his left eyebrow, that it was a hair of good luck, a sign of long life and that he, the barber, was not to touch it. Of course the barber agreed. Amazingly the Master had not himself previously noticed the hair. He had only recently read about it in Uragami’s newspaper article. While his wife related this story, 68 �the Master remained silent but, Uragami told us, a flicker had crossed his face “as if it had caught the shadow of a passing bird.” Uragami has reflected that more than a decade has passed since the Master’s death and no method has been devised for determining the succession to the title “Master of Go.” Instead rationalism, with its tedious rules, meticulous point system, and emphasis on winning has wrung the concepts of dignity and afflatus out of the process. “Victory” has become a commercial asset for a competitive person (read disciple of Go). The life of a player today, far from lustrative, is consumed by contests, annual title matches, and recitals of strength in flashy championship tournaments. In all three matches played in the last decade of his life, the Master had fallen ill midway through. After the first he was bedridden. After the third he died. Each game took inordinately long. It was as if in these final playoffs an epoch (a complete system of values and aesthetics) virtually embodied in the Master, came grinding to a halt. The last, nimbus of an eon, should in its own right have been a masterpiece, but as Uragami said, “By this time the Master could not stand outside the rules of equality.” Witness the contrast between the Master and his opponent, Uragami continued. Once the former, quiet and 69 �nerveless, sank into a game, he did not leave. Otake, on the other hand, frequently excused himself, presumably as a consequence of his habit of drinking copious pots of tea. (Otake’s difficulty however had not stopped at enuresis. Often he had left his overskirt behind him in the hallway and his obi as well.) His way of sitting down and getting up were as if readying himself for battle. Typically a long deliberation would be capped in the final minute by a hundred or a hundred fifty plays of surging violence — quite unlike the Master’s steadfast immobility suggestive of one who had lost all consciousness of his own identity. One indeed got the impression that when the Master was seated at the Go board he had the power to quiet his surroundings. This power, the result of long training and discipline, “alchemically” affected the Master’s physical body and was especially noticeable (Uragami reported with some authority since he had taken the last photographs) in his dead body where his large longish face with its bold features, his strong jaw and his disproportionately long trunk had seemed exaggerated. Even more pronounced, she thought, was the eerie sense one had of his torso disappearing from the waist down. His legs and hips, insubstantial to the extreme, seemed inadequate even for his weight (which she knew to be about sixty-five) — a child’s 70 �weight. His knees (in seiza it was obvious) appeared transparently thin. The Master’s physique confirmed what those knowledgeable about the spirit of Go have long suspected i.e. that the intense concentration required would chisel away at a player’s manifest being (it was almost as if concentration itself replaced a player’s body). One would imagine that when in recess the Master would prefer diversions of an altogether different nature, but Uragami explicitly noted that the Master had literally been addicted to games — mahjongg, billiards, chess — which he passionately played day and night, even in the interval between a professional session and dinner. Uragami’s description of a glimpse he had one day of the Master walking the hundred or so yards across the garden from the outbuilding of the Naraya Inn to his apartment in the main building bore this out on the one hand, and ironically (that it should come from a mere glimpse) gave her more of an insight than she got anywhere else in the report of the true magnitude of what was before her. Just beyond the gate of the outbuilding was a short slope and the Master, palms lightly clasped behind him, bent forward as he climbed it. His body, held perfectly straight from the hips, made his spindly legs seem all the more accessory. “The retreating figure of the Master against the background sound of flowing 71 �water carried along with it the retreating fragrance of Go as a graceful and elegant path,” Uragami eulogized. From photographs of the dead body, in which there appears to be only a head, a doll’s head, almost gruesome (as if severed), the Master’s martyrdom (she named it from her present vantage point) — the sacrifice of an invincible life for the sake of an art that was no longer relevant — seemed all but conclusive. 72 �book two ��Sweet soft night Sweet soft night descended with the roses. Moist air, rose-blossomed and thorny. Soft thorns. Yes. Very soft thorns. She pulled the peach-colored flower closer, thumbing the thorns, letting them jab her calluses. The vine concealed crossed stems of buds that released their fragrances one at a time. ❍ “No! No! I’ve never in my life bounced a check.” Her mother’s voice, aggrieved, suddenly clear as a bell. She had expected her mother, informed by her bank, to have brought up the subject herself. “I have it right here. It says ‘payment stopped’ in bold red letters,” she said as she realized her mistake. She could feel her mother’s mind stretching to recall. 75 �“I can’t remember, honey. I know I stopped payment on something.” ❍ The sumptuousness of a day on the verge of rain. Its luminescence (bundles of light-filled randomness). Trillions chirped. Their swarm. And the acres and acres of wildflowers across incipient-summer land. She dreamed of them. Their colors moist. Their aura, lotus-purple. The cry of a hawk awoke the child. It too screamed but its voice (bellowing across the canyon’s wood) was from a distant century. The hollow hill, the hollow skull without a candle reddening its eyes. ❍ Squawk squawk squawk. She looked up. The jay’s loud voice filled a flower-ridden tree. The sky, bubbling with clouds, made its own daisy-filled, just-about-summer, meadow. Sun beamed through the window carrying the silvery smell of tree (a very slight breeze plus the lugubrious weight of heat). You could see the heat, its little parcels of debris not quite melding. 76 �“The practice of yoga requires effort (which means staying with being) and detachment (which means colorlessness — non-projection — impartiality). It requires a switch that cannot be thought into play,” iterated her teacher. The yogi’s body (twisting and folding over itself). It startled her — this dumpy, late middle-aged woman disappearing utterly. ❍ Once she’d seen a documentary of (was it) Margot Fonteyn? The ballerina had married late and when her husband became ill, she’d retired. “That’s what I want,” she’d thought, as she’d watched her, in her blue sweater, bend from the waist to offer her husband a drink. ❍ The night’s cool breeze. Alone, from her porch, the green evening pulsed with fragrant flowers. Nagai Kafu had idealized prostitutes and set the scene, no doubt as a statement of mutability, of a story which still haunted her on the Ginza in “second” Tokyo (which succeeded “first” Tokyo destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1923 and which, in its own turn, disap77 �peared in the American incendiary raids of 1945). Perhaps he’d envied their cavalier style, their freedom to eschew the social constraints that he, raised in a respectable family, had to suffer. He was certainly aware that their feckless ways were also precarious. Take a waitress, for example. Her livelihood might easily have depended on the generosity (read loneliness or sexual neediness) of strangers — customers who dropped into one’s restaurant — or, after hours, passers-by on the street who’d respond in kind to a seductive “Hey loverboy, how ’bout a cup of tea?” And of course, as he pointed out, among themselves these people made their own fine distinctions. The combs in one’s hair, the “flying” pattern on one’s kimono, the twill of one’s haori, the embroidery on a sash, if the slightest bit frowsy, mockingly declared one as incult. Or even those between waitress-prostitute, geisha-prostitute and outand-out prostitute. This nomenclature clearly signaled a level of expertise in the work of giving pleasure that closely affected the bearer and toward which she must bow. The bottom line was one’s ability to arouse a fantasy, the suggestion that anything might be possible, that “with me one might enter the highest realms of the unknown” which allure, by the way, was the same as that of houses of God. From this standpoint Kafu’s attraction to his subject made sense. In fact, now that she reflected, she thought her own fascination with this 78 �particular story had to do with the loyal nature of the bond between its hero and heroine held firm despite their obvious character flaws and wild vicissitudes in the back alleys of their external lives. One of the most notable features of this world, at least for her what stood out and stayed with her, was the constancy of its ephemerality. While nothing lasted, nothing significant appeared to change, even over the course of generations. The story began in typical desuetude — the couple, dishabilled from having just awakened, were calculating what with the New Year approaching and her in her late thirties/early forties, how much longer could they go on living off her earnings? Granted she was still lovely and looked much younger than she actually was, but . . . didn’t they need to begin . . . at which moment she was called to the phone. Her immediate presence was required at an assignation house. They, of course, were used to this. She wanted to be called as much as possible. Frequently there wasn’t time even for a bowl of rice. She’d dressed and flew off leaving Jukichi to eat his soft-boiled egg and warmed leftover milk alone. He tidied up and ran whatever errands. O-Chiyo would be back tonight or tomorrow some time, possibly tomorrow night in which case she’d call or have someone call. Other men would resent this eclipsed existence, but the decisive turn toward intimacy in their relationship had 79 �happened on the occasion of his letting her know, that he “got” the nature of her work (which was not in a bar as she had told him) and that it was okay. So long as she was straight with him, whatever she did was fine. The relief for both of them at this extraordinary conversation — most of it conveyed through gesture and facial expression — left its indelible mark. They became inseparable from that moment. The specifics shifted. The woman’s house from where originated most of O-Chiyo’s work was raided and they had to evacuate the neighborhood immediately on threat of arrest. Shortly thereafter O-Chiyo, in a crowded street with a new customer, got separated from him and when she ran to catch up, joining hands again, she found herself holding the hand of the wrong person. This man however, a genial philandering ex-official who had lived down a bribery scandal, whisked her into a cab and in the end set her up in a house of her own choosing as his concubine. Jukichi, being the one with free time, found the house and in addition an apartment several blocks away for himself so they could stay together except for the nights the man came around. These little developments, beginning with his discovery of her working as a prostitute, only served to strengthen Jukichi’s connection to O-Chiyo. The idea 80 �that other men found pleasure in her body somehow made her all the more appealing. Unlike O-Chiyo, Jukichi held a university degree. He had tried his hand at writing, but his enthusiasm at every employment opportunity trailed off shortly after he was hired. Should he be ashamed of allowing a woman to support him (of battening at her expense) or just resign himself that this was how he was? After all, within its own definitions their way of life was honest. O-Chiyo seemed happy. They were neither hypocritical nor materialistic which was saying a lot in their land of lies. 81 �The sweet smell came again in the night The sweet smell came again in the night. She listened for the rain, softly falling on the silky hill. No birds. No cats. Just silence and rain. ❍ “Child’s Pose,” he’d said, as if it were a pose for children. “What I like about it . . .” his voice trailed off. “You feel massaged,” he’d finally gushed. “Lotus posture is too advanced.” She could hear the soft twilight twitter of the hill’s young birds. A dove cooed in the distance — coo coo coo — in threes. (Its rhythm and predictability melted through her body.) For years she had pooh-poohed massage as if it were simply an indulgence dressed in “healing” attire. But when she’d healed through its soothing effect — washing one’s face, brushing one’s hair or even teeth are forms of massage, she’d realized. Sweet and cool the puffs of rain had startled her out of a sleep. It had taken her awhile to understand — that she had gone to bed and since then, only several hours later, the whole world had changed. Her chimes were pulsing and a soft fresh breeze ambled around her sheets and hovered over her pillow. 82 �So that when she awakened in the morning and it was raining, she remembered that this rain had started during the night, that its slow, penetrating drizzle would probably last all day. Which made her heart jump. ❍ “Mt. Diablo beams,” she thought, feeling like a fish in a lighted aquarium. A bank of clouds perched tidily. Mountain, sun, a few trees and low-lying hills made for a beautiful backdrop. Dawn, like a bowl capped the striated rock. “The violinist played jigs,” her mother, a bit out of breath from dashing to the phone, gasped in an effort to sound cheerful. Her throat hurt. (She could tell.) Sweet morning air drifted through the window along with chirps in clear clumps of six. “Who’s that bird?” she found herself thinking. “He talked for two and a half hours and then at the end he volunteered to play. We all expected something classical.” “What is your connection to Brandeis, mother?” (She wondered what had impelled . . . her mother had never “belonged” to anything in her life!) “Oh you know Brandeis. The university, honey.” 83 �❍ White sky. Branches bled against a bone horizon. “For they too are bone.” Listening for birds, their twitter in the darkness. Making it more dark. (Their unseen privilege.) Her grandfather had fed them. The stump of his personality, without apology, its brittle rub, its unforgiving stride. The crippled boy across the street. (His stare came to mind.) ❍ Creamy sand and ocean-blue water pressed against the sky. So that it too seemed vigorous, its blue, weighty. Pulsing and sharp. Hot noon air, singed and crackled alive over the seaedge. Dusty afternoon turned to limpid night. The mote of the firefly’s silky, neon, beep-beam-beep. The limb of a palm elbowing restful gray. “Hey you!” (A young thing with young gestures.) Peeling, cackling nuts and bark. Fronds on top fan the liquid earth. Lamp posts strutting noble and tall like a black tap dancer. 84 �“Come one, come all,” an announcer shrieks in his ocean voice, megaphoned astride the savannah. (She wears a beanie.) ❍ Waiting for fish. The patio’s soft lights reflecting the pool’s blue shadows. The band, the soft soft shuffle beneath caged birds. The woman’s legs beneath her yellow sunsuit. Pumps, pocketbook, patent-leather gleaming. Out of silence, surf. “I am alive,” you say. “The art of swimming is immobile, pristine and very fashionable.” ❍ The color of feathers (a pheasant’s or robin’s) — vibrations of spray piled on to ease. Breath is protection, sweeping out the gross nature (a person’s inspiration, another form of breathing). Play is breathing. ❍ Sweet-potato fields near the poor folks homes, seething in the blue blue day. Pigeons coo from fringy gussets of former forest. 85 �A herd of deer, coppery and dark through morning shadow. Their swivel into nubile space, queer and graceful (as if it were not a herd but a flower family waving on the hillside). Dark-eyed people traveling narrow footpaths. ❍ A warm light beckoned her. (Someone had turned it on but left no shadow.) She gazed at the grass, its green breath cheerful. From its roots she heard the sea, back and forth, matted and pressed (slurped and swallowed Christlike slenderness). Was it loss of control of her body that she found so embarrassing? She didn’t think it was simply age. Secretly she was proud of her age though it made no sense. Perhaps it wasn’t merely her age but the way she was inhabiting her age that pleased her. ❍ “It’s not true,” she said, clearing her throat. She cleared her throat a lot. Her frail voice was like a thin thread. She glanced out the window. As her mother spoke, the bells of coolness churled. 86 �Her mother’s voice receded with the oncoming night. Spring branches, budding with baby leaves bowed to the sun as it dropped behind the hill. “I don’t know,” her mother resumed. She’d suddenly sounded disgusted with herself. “I get into bed to read and I’m out like a light. But a few hours later, I’m up again. At 5:00 I’m up for good.” “I’ve always been this way, honey.” “I’m not saying I go around tired,” she suddenly added. “But when I get a full eight hours of sleep, I can’t explain . . .” Her pause contained a lifetime of frustration grappling with this issue. She thought of her mother’s sad depleted body. “Do you remember when I worked at the Chart and Information Center?” As she asked, odd-shaped pods on floating branches came into focus. A few birds, their nighttime serenade beneath a starless sky. 87 �Kiyooka Susumu’s Wife A Woman Educated Beyond the Needs of Her Society Had Kimie been a different sort of woman she would have turned green when her cohorts shoved under her nose the caption, “Home Life of a Celebrity. The writer Kiyooka Susumu’s wife, Tsuruko” alongside a photograph of a truly stunning woman seated on her veranda. But Kimie, Kiyooka’s mistress of several years, was unimpressed. Even when goaded, “You’re quite jealous, aren’t you?” by her fellow waitresses, Kimie, surprised by them, scuttled, “It’s just as it should be. A wife is a wife. I don’t have to worry about her.” For Kimie, who took her pleasure as it came, these words were true enough. As fashionable and rich as Kiyooka now was, thanks to the skyrocketing success of his pulp fiction, for Kimie, who chose to remain in her threadbare room seeming to prefer the filthy alley that it fronted and its dinginess to the effort it would take to move (she did nothing it improve its charm either — the place reeked of transience and shabbiness), Kiyooka’s sprint into fame hardly mattered. She continued to receive him dispassionately just as she received all the others. Unbeknownst to Kimie, her casual words were rife with meaning. Tsuruko was Kiyooka’s wife in name only. 88 �When they met she was twenty-three and already married to a graduate of military college. She and Kiyooka fell into a liaison at a hotel while her husband was studying abroad. Her husband’s family, terrified of gossip, dissolved the marriage without consulting their son on the pretext of Tsuruku’s frail health. Her own parents were dead. Her brother bestowed a small amount of money on her and promptly disowned her. (Kiyooka at the time was living with his father.) The moment Tsuruko’s marriage was annulled, he moved in with her. Though Kiyooka’s father, Akira, a scholar and instructor of Chinese composition at the Imperial University, cringed at his son’s open affair with a woman the world considered married, he wisely refrained from saying so. One day, at his wife’s grave, however, he came upon a young woman also offering flowers. He gathered this must be Kiyooka’s new “housemate,” but he could not fathom the two behaviors — honoring the death anniversary of an unknown “mother-in-law” and shacking up with his unfilial son — abiding within one personality. The two began to talk and soon became deeply engrossed in conversation. By chance they met in a railway station. Over the course of time Tsuruko was given entrée to his secluded country retirement cottage. 89 �It thus came to Tsuruko’s attention that although Akira had a gardener and a woman to look after the household chores, he lacked for proper meals, clean clothing, and attentions to his person. Gingerly she began to care for him. She did everything in a discreet manner so as to offend neither Akira (he most certainly would have disclaimed any need had she openly asked) nor his older daughter to whom the duty more properly belonged. Just as unobtrusively Akira grasped the unhappy state of Tsuruko’s second marriage. Believing his son to be a debauched scoundrel he wasn’t surprised, but he was sorry to learn the truth just as he had determined to add Tsuruko’s name to the Susumu family register. Indeed the passion between Tsuruko and Kiyooka had barely lasted a year. Kiyooka’s first act as “darling of the literary world,” ostentatiously buying a lavish house for a movie star, was follow by ostentatiously surrounding himself with a covey of geisha. Eventually the movie star dumped him at which point he made the waitress Kimie his concubine. Tsuruko found herself not so much envious as deeply saddened to discover the true nature of her husband’s character. Her own upbringing included tutoring in French and etiquette by Madame Joule and in classic literature and calligraphy by a Japanese scholar. Refinement proved her undoing. Marrying as she did initially into the prosaic household 90 �of a professional soldier and, subsequently, to Kiyooka (turned impresario and speculator, swilling Western liquor with his cronies and placing nightly mahjongg wagers and horse-racing bets) her inbred éclat was a complete waste. She had in fact decided to leave, but unendurable as her circumstances were, an inexplicable inertia took over as she squandered one opportunity after another to speak with him. Every day she continued coldly to honor him, it became that much harder (because her loyalty seemed that much more pretentious) to change things. For his part, Kiyooka had never intended in the first place to make Tsuruko his legal wife. He wanted merely to enjoy occasional trysts with her. Her earnestness, however gradually derailed this plan and when he learned of the money from her brother, he found himself racing to her side. The quality of her person incrementally had had its effect which was to make him feel ashamed of his own immorality. In the end it soured his enjoyment of her. He felt cramped with the restraints on his vulgarity her presence imposed, and then unenduringly lonely. That’s why he pursued the joys of the “floating world” so assiduously and would have done even more in this direction if the waitress Kimie showed more enthusiasm. ❍ Hot new-moon morning. A shallow breeze aroused her chimes. Squirrels. Birds. She set her thoughts aside. 91 �“Do you ever hear from him?” Her mother’s low voice, referring to her father, rose out of nowhere. “No.” “Months ago I asked JoAnne if she knew if he were still alive. She said she’d call him, but I guess she forgot.” “She may not have remembered,” her mother repeated. It was obvious she was hurt. The incident hadn’t been important enough to make a point of, but still, she would have liked to know. She recalled a time when her mother’s fury at her father had been so volatile that her “no” would have been a strategy to end the conversation. Now her “no” was simply “no.” She hadn’t anything else to say. ❍ Coo. Coo. An old owl, early. The day darkening amidst so many trees (their deep green shade) and a man amongst its branches “cleaning” one of them. Debris from the tree was falling on her porch where she stood, directly below the man and in line with the debris that looked like stardust. It had been 9:00 A.M. when the pleasant dream ended. Every few hours it’d seemed like she’d moan ( from the midst of her stupor), “Just a little more, please.” 92 �The day had zoomed from February to May in about four hours. Naked branches glistened in the groin of the hill, slender, deer-colored — and clean. A rickety bus (splayed with sunflower seeds) had twin rows of soft, red leathered, two-person-sized seats. One row was bedlike with no central divide. At each window edge perched another leather-covered panel. Passengers could lie down and use the panel as a pillow. She and her companion had chosen the opposite side however. She had some papers that she’d wanted to give to someone to work on and was in turmoil about whether to spend time organizing them in a way the other person would be able easily to understand or just let “them” figure it out. “What a battle!” she’d thought when the alarm finally rang. ❍ “It’s Tuesday,” she realized, glancing at the murky sky. “They said it was going to rain.” She studied the sky. Black as coal with puffy gray trailing wispily. “Why is that man blinding me with his high beams,” she stewed, wedged behind a truck. It was well after seven. 93 �Droplets glazed her windshield. Ever-so-tiny, they scattered themselves about. The previous day she had been forced to drive through narrow (and slippery) switchbacks. She’d crept along. Actually the trees lightened the rain, which on the freeway had seemed deadly. But what had taken her aback was a bicyclist pumping up the steep (and extremely muddy) road full of pot-holes, branches, leaves, rocks. The cyclist’s clothing covered his body and was shiny like a wet suit. “It’s not a wet suit,” she’d thought. “It’s not even waterproof. At best it’s water repellent. (Which does nothing.)” ❍ The storm was unseasonal. Even the birds, it seemed, didn’t know what to do. An old cypress shivered. Stuck out in the smoky sky, forlorn, stoic, an injunction to a complainer. Traffic inched around a duckless pond. A plumber’s truck, with odd (for a plumber) boulangerie-style print, blocked her view of the long stretch between exits. She watched her impatience rise. Recently she’d been in a long line of cars snaking toward the tunnel. Could it have been the heat that 94 �shoved her to the shoulder, straight into the highway patrol’s snare? “It’s a form of agoraphobia,” she’d told herself, trying to normalize it. But it hadn’t worked. Other people simply didn’t get this upset. ❍ New-moon heat subdued the birds. (Their soft cheeps in the fruit trees.) “Tonight between 5:00 and 7:00.” The woman, in a neon shirt, sounded sure. “On new-moon days, it’s best to practice slowly,” the teacher’d interjected. “Or not at all. On full moons too. Energy is flying about.” (She pictured a blind person swiping the air.) The light on the hill had shone burnt orange. An old past burnt-orange fragment of time. ❍ “Sloppy sun,” she’d thought till she’d remembered the eclipse. It felt like its muscles had tired. “Perhaps it’s her voice that’s tired,” she’d corrected herself as she listened to her mother’s dream. 95 �“That evening on t.v. (I don’t even know why I watch this program) but (did you see it, honey?) an old woman stuffed a hot dog down her neighbor’s throat.” Clearly she had been riled. “Afterwards I dreamed that a big bird had swallowed two other birds, one slightly smaller and one very small. When I opened the big bird’s mouth, the small bird flew away, but the larger one . . . I couldn’t pry it out.” She’d glanced at the darkening sky. Her mother’s voice trailed off just as the solar eclipse had become a force in the room. ❍ Smokey air. Brittle grass. “A stale morning,” she’d thought, gazing at the cobwebbed air. Everything felt congested. Loud thin chirps pierced through the bushes, fading chirps announcing the morning’s end. Her heart tingled at a glimpse of her little plant. Strange. When she saw the same plant on the street, in a random yard, say, or a church, invariably it looked cheap. Even larger ones with brightly-colored petals left her dejected. 96 �It was as if this were the true flower, hers merely a property of her mind. To see her treasure so naked (exposed) was off-putting. ❍ The birds’ electrical cheep in the chill morning air. One buzzed. One sweetly chirped. Another coo coo coo’d. She shut her eyes. Tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet. She could sense the trees’ roots’ pleasure (like toes) spreading through the cool rich mud. ❍ “Honey,” she’d said. “It came all the way around to the window and just stood there.” She was referring to a hummingbird whose feeder she’d forgotten to refill. While she’d heard that hummingbirds were like soldiers when it came to their nectar sites, she’d never heard of a bird “going to get” someone and staring them into submission. “They’re mean!” her mother continued. “They’ll attack!” She’d read about one attacking a little boy. “Some birds,” she’d said, referencing a second feeder, “will take one seed, fly off to a corner of the yard, eat it and maybe come back for another.” As her mother 97 �spoke she’d had the image of a well-mannered child in her Mary-Janes accepting only one chocolate marshmallow bunny. “But sparrows slop them all over the ground. Their refuse attracts rats.” “Without the birds, the yard is lifeless, so I keep putting out seeds,” she’d continued slowly. She sounded discouraged. The yard in question sloped gently upwards toward a thick grove of bamboo. Some azaleas and rhododendrons had recently been taken out. “They just got too big for the hill,” her mother explained. “After they flower, you can cut them back. But if you miss this window, you risk cutting off the next season’s buds.” It was evident what had happened. She shut her eyes. It pleased her that her mother had developed such a close relationship with the life her property hosted. She pictured her father putzing about. “He won’t let anyone else touch it,” her mother said with pride. She tried to recall the back of their large, colonial-style dwelling. A swimming pool with iridescent flies was all that came to mind. She imagined her mother alone, probably in her housecoat, watching the birds early in the morning. Suddenly 98 �she remembered another part of the conversation. It seemed that a pair of parent swallows were teaching their fledgling to fly. Standing at opposite ends of the pool, they’d take turns accompanying it across. “They’re adorable,” her mother had exuded, though her voice had sounded sad. ❍ Once as a child she’d been home alone and wanted something from her mother’s room. She’d opened her bureau drawers. One had sweaters. Beading covered the entire front of an aqua-colored cardigan, soft, weighty with sequins, pearls and teeny silver balls. One had swimsuits. Kneeling by the drawer she’d splayed them on the carpet. Who was this person who wore Hawaiian-flowered outfits, belly exposed, featuring thighs? Not a swimmer. Not a mother. Her mother had worn high heels, but her feet, strangely, had looked old in them. ❍ “I don’t know,” she said. “What was I talking about?” She had mentioned a friend who had recently visited. Now she couldn’t remember what she had intended to say. “Oh well. It wasn’t important.” At another time she would have said, “Oh well. It’ll come back to me.” 99 �❍ “And I’ve just talked the whole time,” she said as the conversation drew to a close. “I wanted to know about you. Find out how you are doing.” She said the same thing at the end of every conversation. “I’m going to be eighty,” she’d continued, almost in a whisper. “I’m going to be sixty.” (It had just come out.) While she privately had scorned her mother for underpreparing for her death, (“Anyone deserves better,” she’d said to herself, picturing the enhanced quality that her mother’s final years would assume if consciously engaged in), with oversights like the above, she couldn’t help but wonder how much of her scorn was merely a projection of her own avoidance of the subject. “How does it feel to be almost eighty?” Had she not asked because she didn’t want to know? Imagine leaving her mother alone, stranded with feelings that so obviously frightened her! Usually it was her mother that swished the subject away. 100 �“I wish I could knit,” she’d drawled, as if, magically, her daughter might make it so. “My friends say ‘why don’t you just try,’ but my surgeon said ‘your knitting days are over!’ ” “Your knitting days are over!” she’d repeated, mimicking his sternness, experiencing again the torture of the verdict. (Her mother’s old, olive-colored skin crinkled along the extremities.) Her mother’s knitting had always been looser than hers. 101 �“Look at that face” “Look at that face.” The woman was staring at a Matisse. The portrait was of a youngish woman with large sad eyes. To her, the model’s expression — chin narrow, forehead broad — was not as striking as her friend’s command. As they stepped into an adjoining (more contemporary) room, they’d agreed that — well — (she was still thinking, not about the face, but about the negative space behind the words calling it to her attention). ❍ What in her face had so moved her grandmother, she wondered. She couldn’t have been more than a toddler. So that it must have been something inbred. Probably a feature she still had. Or perhaps one her grandmother had had or had wished she’d had. Her face, she felt, had never let her down. Her cheeks were trim, not lazy, though there had been a period when they’d seemed bland, expressionless, shy. Her body, likewise, had taken on a square, sort of nondescript, blah-ness. 102 �It occurred to her that the quality in her face admired by her grandmother might be different from the one she herself appreciated. Perhaps Matisse had painted the longing he’d hoped a woman might feel for him? Having no idea of whether she’d actually felt that. ❍ “It was just hard to read, that’s all.” Her mother paused. “Because I knew how much he loved you.” Her mother referred to a section about her grandfather in a long autobiographical poem that she had written some years earlier. Several less than positive references to her mother had prevented her from calling this work to her attention. “Where did you find it?” she had asked, instead of responding to her mother’s concern about her grandfather. “Barnes & Noble.” Then she’d launched into a defense of her father. As her mother’s story progressed, she had found her attention drifting further and further away. “He wasn’t mean, honey. He never refused to give me what I wanted.” 103 �“But he made you cry. I’d come home from school and you’d be weeping on the phone. I couldn’t forgive him for making you cry.” ❍ Her thoughts drifted to Yukiko and she took out her pen: Gentle, quiet, graceful though Yukiko was, she was (they would never say so) an embarrassment to her sisters. The fact that she had passed the marriageable age (she reached thirty without a husband) was like a thorn in the family side reminding them of the gradual decline in status of the Makioka name and the concomitant need for adjustment in their attitude. It used to be, as members of an old and established household, that the willful rejection of an even slightly deficient suitor was in keeping with their reputation and prosperity. But extravagance (their father had been an ostentatious spender) and mismanagement were having their effect. Tatsuo, the eldest sister Tsuruko’s husband, who became the head of the family after their father died, discovered the deceased man’s business to be heavily in debt. It was Tatsuo ultimately, against “loud” protests from his sisters-in-law, who took the decisive step to sell the shop. Worried about his responsibility as family heir, he chose what for him would be the safer, more familiar course — to stay in banking. Oddly, it was also Tatsuo, austere, retired, almost 104 �timid, who took up the cause (apropos Makioka’s new lowered standards) of finding Yukiko a husband. One of the executives in Tatsuo’s bank acted as the go-between. The candidate was heir to a wealthy family, himself an executive of a bank in a provincial city. Though Tatsuo know Yukiko was loathe to leave Kobe, her wishes on this score were too irrelevant to be taken seriously. (In his opinion the provinces suited her shy, non-urbane ways.) Since the two banks corresponded, Tatsuo was privy to all the information he needed concerning the man’s character, finances, and social position, which was, if anything, a little too high for the current standing of the Makiokas. Yukiko however was not predisposed to approve of the choice by the very brother-in-law who, in selling the family’s business, had behaved in a way that violated (she was certain) her dead father’s wishes. What’s more, she found the man countrified. Yukiko didn’t need her degree from a ladies’ seminary to spot his lack of breeding. She would be quite unable to respect him. Rather than saying so directly (one of her main shortcomings was seldom to say enough to make herself well understood), she hemmed and hawed, giving vague answers that could be taken to mean anything. Tatsuo, conveniently, took her reticence to mean that she was not hostile to the proposal. So that when, in the end, 105 �she said a flat “No — the fellow lacks an intelligent face,” Tatsuo was stunned. He privately suspected her of deliberately trying to embarrass him (a grave misreading of Yukiko’s nature). Yukiko was happiest when allowed to live out her life in the household of her second oldest sister Sachiko. Their Kobe home was modern and casual and Etsuko, her niece, thrived on the exclusive ministerings of her cultured aunt. In some ways Yukiko was closer to Etsuko and a better “mother” to her than Sachiko (which fact Sachiko recognized and was grateful for — felt relieved by). Forever useful here, Yukiko dreaded being called to the Main House in Osaka when her brother-in-law and Tsuruko periodically got it in their heads that she more properly belonged there. She also dreaded the increasingly infrequent miai arranged on her behalf by an assortment of matchmakers. She said nothing of course. Silently she participated in one after another. They seemed frequent because of her mortification at being paraded before the unappreciative — her delicate, slender, old-world beauty was not what they wanted (placing her in the demeaning position of entertaining rejection by her cultural inferiors) as well as the fact that they jeopardized her present living arrangement which privately she found most satisfactory . . . she remained relatively unnoticed. To her credit, Sachiko, determined to find a man who 106 �preferred, nay who would downright insist on a woman of Yukiko’s caliber, ardently defended her. But as time went on, a promising candidate (“bird-in-hand”) weakened even Sachiko’s integrity. Ironically it was Sachiko’s lively presence, her more accessible beauty, that dwarfed Yukiko’s more subdued one. Indeed the younger sister appeared, beside the ever-bright older, a bit moody. Recently a faint spot, a mere shadow that came and went in cycles was showing itself over Yukiko’s left eye. Sachiko and Teinosuke were worried that it would negatively affect the opinion of a new prospect that had been found through the good offices of Itani, their hairdresser. (Sachiko, knowing Itani’s fondness for arranging marriages, had left Yukiko’s photograph with her.) Itani, it turned out, had sent the picture to a man she heard about but didn’t hear back from for so long, she nearly forgot him. Then she learned he was busy investigating Yukiko’s background. Itani meanwhile had gleaned the following about the man: 1) He is an office worker at M.B. Chemical Industries, a French company. 2) He lives with his mother in a small house that he purchased some time ago by installment. 3) Though he is over forty, he looks younger. 4) He has never been married. (This was the biggest plus. The Makiokas had more or less given up hope of finding a previously unmarried man. Also that he might know a little French was of 107 �interest.) 5) His photograph reveals a plain enough person, a middling office worker — one can tell at a glance. 6) His income accordingly is moderate — what one might expect. Segoshi actually managed to spend a few moments alone with Yukiko at the hasty miai that was conducted. When he later requested a second interview (just with her), she didn’t refuse, which was uncharacteristic of her, nor had she objected to an x-ray and skin examination when at one point the question of the strange mark over her eye became the focus of attention. Though she revealed by not the slightest quiver her true feelings on the matter, her docility — might this in itself be an indication that even Yukiko was concerned about spinsterhood? How seriously did she take the old adage “bad luck chases women born in the year of the ram”? Segoshi’s investigations were now complete and he was anxious to move forward, but the Main House in Osaka, for some reason, dallied. Itani was relentless and Sachiko in turn grew impatient with the Main House. She watched herself become more and more hopeful that this time the negotiations would succeed. With a little distance and greater objectivity however she realized that their very desire for a match (out of all proportion to what they could reasonably expect) had the perverse effect of dazzling them, heightening their excitement (possibly even their greed). Was a contract 108 �with this man really suitable? The check and balance system provided by the two houses, much as she resisted it — the slowness especially — had its advantages. Finally a call came from Tsuruko. “It’s a good thing we took our time,” she began. “It seems that the mother, whom we were told had palsy, is in fact mentally ill. She doesn’t even recognize her own son.” Sachiko understood. A strain of insanity in Segoshi’s blood posed an insurmountable difficulty. He would have to be refused. “There is nothing to be done, Yukiko,” Sachiko consoled, her, gently enough. ❍ The woman’s ribs. That afternoon she had placed her hand on several. She had expected to feel bone but instead, there was a hodge-podge of bumpy flesh. “Feel mine,” her massage therapist had said. (She’d wanted her to understand how to breathe diaphragmatically.) “Place your hands on my rib cage and feel my inhale,” she’d said as she’d picked up hands that had just felt her own dismally weak one. She’d expected sharp poky spindles encircling air. 109 �Coo. Coo. Coo. Coo. Coo. Coo. Ancient bird on a long slow evening. Your whisper is my mother. “He stopped smoking cigars after a lifetime of smoking cigars. Don’t you remember, honey. Your grandmother was so mad.” “At what?” “At his dying. For leaving her alone. She lived twelve more years. I’m surprised you don’t remember.” “When he died, she must have been bereft.” Her mother’s voice dropped. ❍ “My doctor,” she began. “What was I saying? Oh yes. My doctor says that my walking and my aspirin are what keep me alive.” She was silent for awhile. “Except I’ve had to cut way back on my walking. After about twelve minutes, my arms and hands hurt.” Suddenly she came alive. “Your grandmother walked. She walked everyday. It kept her spirits up.” She recalled her grandmother’s intentional and vigorous stride. 110 �“One day she was walking in the loop. She was just beyond the city gates when a black man knocked her down, grabbed her purse and ran away. She didn’t have much money in her purse. But she hurt her hip. After that she was never the same.” ❍ The sweet singing of birds and then the steady peal of an old church bell abruptly with the dawn. She lay there listening. This had been the second time birds — their pre-dawn clamor — had pleasantly extended her day. Actually, when she thought about it, she wondered why this hadn’t happened every morning — the birds’ ruckus being just as loud and just as early. The church bell also sounded regularly. Its slow, scratchy, Cotswolds-pounding swell. ❍ “It blooms all year,” the salesperson said. “Depending on how you feed it, you can get blue, purple, rose or even eggnog-colored blossoms.” While she appreciated the information, she wondered why the woman had assumed that she would tire of its pleasant pink. 111 �As a child she’d had a hydrangea tree. She’d called its flaky flowers snowballs. In the winter they’d all die at once shielding the ground in a blue-white cover. “It’s odd,” she thought. “The salesperson has been touting its inherent ‘evergreen’ nature, whereas my heart recalls its spectacular demise.” The hydrangea had replaced a small Japanese Maple she had purchased the previous fall. The merchant had told her that though its branches would be barren over winter, if she simply waited, it would blossom in the spring. Meanwhile she needn’t even water it. Indeed, she had waited and indeed it had just begun to sprout lovely purple leaves (its limbs were singing) when suddenly they’d gone limp. “They look like a sick old woman,” she’d thought. Her next thought had been aphids. Of course she didn’t know for sure. What she did know, however, was that this emaciated stack of sticks was now depressing. The hydrangea had made her happier than a “solution” to her problem warranted. Just picturing it made her tingle inside. A common plant. It was nothing special. Even the saleswoman, embarrassed at its plebian color, had recommended fiddling with its diet. 112 �❍ Coo coo coo. Down the chimney echoed a dreary day. She wasn’t the only person pre-dawn birds were startling out of their sleep. The image of someone that she expected to see in the afternoon bubbled through her mind. She knew that he liked to be welcomed warmly, greeted at the door with a big smile. She pictured herself opening the door early so that he would see her when he rounded the corner from the elevator. “Hi!” she’d yell, leading him in, following him as he shuffled over to the sofa. Even if she didn’t feel particularly exuberant on a given day, the desire to please him in a small, entirely-withinher-means way, she’d realized, would control her behavior. Randomly she pictured his grandchildren. “Be sure to give grandpa a big hug, tell him how much you love him and how happy you are to see him, okay?” was her fantasy of their mother’s forthcoming-visit protocol. Would his grandchildren make fun of him? Mimic him in their play? “Hi, grandpa!” And burst out laughing so hard they wouldn’t (doubled-over) get to the wellknown end? 113 �Suddenly she felt sorry for him. Or was it herself, fixated on a “foible” that most people would find endearing? She wondered which of her own foibles imaginary grandchildren might choose to pantomime. It was a brutal mirror, certainly, boiling oneself down to a laughable caricature. Thinking about it she recalled the Ishiguro tale that several years earlier she had chronicled: The paintings of Masuji Ono, now retired, had commanded considerable attention in the days before the second world war. He recalled the celebrations, the hoopla surrounding his receiving the Shigeta Foundation Award, for example, put on by his pupils at the old Migi-Hidari (since the war it had disappeared along with all the other bars of their district’s pleasure quarter) and how oddly, despite the congratulations and speech after speech in tribute to his achievement, the expected feeling of triumph and deep fulfillment which the award should have brought, had been missing. When the feeling finally came, it had come unexpectedly, in an afternoon of solitude. Several days after the public festivities, he had suddenly been inspired to visit his former teacher Mori-san and had boarded a train to Wakaba, a province he had by 114 �this time avoided for sixteen years, though he hadn’t been able to avoid news of Mori-san and was aware of the steady decline in his reputation. Lately in fact he had noticed that Mori-san was exhibiting in unprestigious halls and he had even heard a rumor that Morisan, fulfilling his own dire parting prediction for him — Ono, had begun illustrating popular magazines. No doubt Mori-san, on his side, had heard about the Shigeta Foundation Award. As he had made his way out to the villa — a path once trodden over and over, various possible conversations between the two of them had drifted through his mind. Strolling up the mountain he’d stopped to admire the view and relaxed for a bit in the wild grass. At that moment he was overcome by the deep sense of satisfaction that had until now escaped him. It was a profound feeling of happiness stemming from the certainty that his efforts had not been made in vain. The risks he had taken, the extreme sacrifices, had proven worthwhile. He had achieved something of real value and distinction. Thus it came as quite a surprise, when negotiations were getting underway for his younger daughter’s miai, to hear from her older sister (whose opinions he sensed mimicked those of her husband — Suichi’s experience in the war had left him bitter, resentful and vociferous in his condemnation of previous supporters of the Imperialist movement), that “precautionary steps” were in 115 �order to make certain that the outcome with the Saitos didn’t repeat last year’s failure with the Miyakes, a family of far less influence. The very fact that it was out of character for Setsuko to make any sort of incriminating remark pertaining to her father made what, upon reflection, were quite pointed ones, all the more troublesome. The sidelong glances, the knowing looks exchanged between the two sisters — his sense that the whole atmosphere between them changed when he walked in the room — had contributed to his impression that they were concerned. Understandably, since the way the Miyakes switched positions, so abruptly and at a point when to all appearances the negotiations were going smoothly (implying a specific reason, some obstacle they deemed insurmountable but giving not the slightest clue as to what that might be) the whole family had been on edge. Noriko was at an age where remaining single would soon be an embarrassment. Difficult as it was for him to envision his career in any other light than immensely favorable, he had to admit that times had changed. The war effort, in the name of which he had abandoned his up-until-then distinctive style (Mori-san’s style) had wrought so much destruction, created so much devastation and pain in the lives of so many (he himself lost his wife and son) that the innocence (good intentions) of those who had supported it, could no longer be taken for 116 �granted, especially by young people. He had heard Suichi’s scathing commentary. His own tyroesque pupil recently requested (granted he had been polite and made his discomfort obvious; nonetheless he was forced by financial realities — he seemed almost desperate — to overcome his reluctance) a letter from him confirming their disagreement over making posters for a particular war project. The pupil’s hireability hinged upon his verifying a trumped-up –once-upon-a-time dissociation! That exquisite loyalty to one’s conscience could lead to actions which future generations deemed shameful — he felt the blow at the core of his being. Nothing could be assumed. Take Ichiro. How unnerved the boy became at the mere hint by his grandfather that pretending to be Lord Yoshitune might be more interesting than playing Lone Ranger or Popeye (granted Ichiro’s renditions of the latter — including bilge, meant-to-be English — were highly amusing). But why a cowboy? A samurai warrior or ninja — ninja of the wind for example — he couldn’t help but feel would be far more salutary (instructive) for a child of seven. What continued to weigh on his mind were his teacher’s words that night in the storeroom just prior to the eruption in their relationship. Having tired of the entertainment provided by a valued pleasure-quarter friend of 117 �Mori-san’s, he had sought refuge in the quiet storeroom. He had been sitting in relative darkness when Mori-san himself appeared and seemed bent on conversation. He wouldn’t have said anything had Mori-san not pressed, but Mori-san had pressed, and eventually he had admitted to being puzzled by the fact that they, as a school, devoted so much of their time enjoying the company of, studying and painting pleasure-quarter characters. Whereupon came Mori-san’s fervent, “The finest, most fragile beauty an artist can hope to capture drifts within those pleasure houses after dark.” Mori-san, as close to pontificating as he ever came, elaborated on the difficulty of capturing their transitory, illusory qualities. He himself, up to that point, was convinced that an artist’s primary concern must be to capture beauty wherever he finds it. Indeed it was his belief that had made Mori-san and himself so compatible. But lately he questioned, in the face of the changing times — adults impoverished, children orphaned, cultural values disintegrating in the wake of blatant and crude financial ones — whether painting courtesans was enough. Eventually he’d decided it wasn’t. As a consequence he was ousted, expelled as a traitor (having been his teacher’s star protégé). With one sweep he’d lost his community, his mentor and even any assurance that he would be able to continue painting. 118 �Once again the picture had shifted subtly. Now that Noriko was married and pregnant with Taro Saito’s baby, both sisters had expressed astonishment that their father had taken the “precautionary steps” that he had. Setsuko’s heartfelt, “Father painted some splendid pictures, and was no doubt the most influential amongst other such painters. But father’s work had hardly to do with these larger matters of which we are speaking. Father was simply a painter. He must stop believing he has done some great wrong.” And even Ichiro’s touching, “Oji’s not to worry.” When he had not succeeded as he ardently promised to extract permission from the boy’s mother for Ichiro to drink a prized drop of sake at the family dinner that night (which clearly had echoed a tone that child heard his parents using) surprised him in the extreme. Lately Setsuko had out and out denied having ever uttered the words “precautionary steps”! If he were to take their present stance literally, the implication was quite obviously that what he thought he heard from them before the miai was nothing more than a projection of his own unacknowledged (and quite unconscious) guilt and shame. It was difficult to believe he had distorted things so radically. All those visits he had forced himself to make to ascertain that nothing detrimental to Noriko stemming from his career as an artist (no unaddressed solecisms) would emerge when 119 �the Saitos investigated his family — if what his daughters were now saying was true, such “precautions” had been out of place. But he had been so certain. His early painting style earning him Mori-san’s tutelage, his patriotic turn making his work legion, his sense more recently of needing to back-pedal — each move had seemed abundantly clear. ❍ Blood red leaves amongst the eucalyptus. Chimes swaggered in a breeze. A luminous night (at the beginning of her life). “The longest day of the year,” she’d thought poised to hear the birds. At 7:00 o’clock, dusk was porous with light. Her chimes sputtered. Still no birds. An engine in the distance revved, then re-revved. The low hum of cars, the bay, bay dogs, a boom box (its sepulchered thump) pulled her from her reverie. 120 �book three ��Who is Kai? “Who is Kai?” His questions. Gary Snyder’s answers. Insistent chirps fizzling to a thread. The cool hill broods birds warbling before light. Is it the heat in light they want to avoid? It brought back her summers in the blackened coastal mountains (the heavy feelings she’d had, remnants of which still cropped up). So Gary says granola and she thinks, “milk, but up there there is no milk . . . does he eat it dry . . . does he just take fistfuls with his pilfered instant coffee?” (She forgot about instant milk — that it existed.) ❍ So why am I thinking about food when Gary is climbing to Horseshoe Lake? Why am I wondering how he can 123 �stand cooking in the rain (raincoat-hood over head) feeling clammy, miserable, stuck. It is reversible but if you’re that conscious . . . “Bones. Please move. Do your thing, okay. Just cooperate (for once).” Think’n: “Why does everybody else look like they’re hav’n a good time?” Dirty hands hook tangled hair over itchy ears, again. Nose drips. No hands to reach into inaccessible pocket (under raincoat under bulging belt). Sooty smoke but how much heat, really. ❍ So birds. Mud, rain, dirty feathers or not (though they have to preen — if their feathers get matted, it’s bad news). Not only that. They need their feathers light, wispy, fluffed to the maximum. Preen all day. Every minute you’re not eating (or gathering food). So you could say, “Well, think of delectable meal in rain-fresh air. Think of sun, wind, sky. Think of trees, blowing branches, flowers.” Anyway, birds seem to do fine in the serial outdoors. 124 �❍ “I’m a kinesthetic learner,” the person had said. “I need to write it down and WHILE I’M WRITING . . .” I think to myself: “I just write to get something READABLE. THEN I learn.” But it’s annoying. If the teacher says, “Wrap your right hand around your left ankle and thread your elbow through your arm . . .” I hear the word hand, but I can’t picture, right off, what that is. I can’t wait to READ it. It’s particularly annoying in that I’m not a visual person. I need to read but I’m not visual. Reading = slowed time. I learn through my heart, via some brain/eye combination. ❍ The wooden hill dripped with mist. “Will it ever lift,” she’d thought watching a Japanese man dash to the pool with his five kids. All wore parkas in Americancandy flavors. His face, lifting one of them, up, over the fence, so the child could open an unexpectedly-locked gate from the inside. But he couldn’t. Something was the matter. The father’s confusion. The patience of the other four. Eventually they left. 125 �Had they been thinking about going swimming? It seemed unlikely. Perhaps the pool was a shortcut to some other part of their condominium’s property. She admired the man’s energy which seemed easy, fun-loving. ❍ Their (the daffodils’) surprise white at the evening’s climax. The white of blue. The white of sky-blue water. So the teacher says, “Get a slant board, a mat, a chair, a blanket — the slant boards are outside . . .” and I look at the clock and think, “Ten to eleven. Twenty-five more minutes.” Because I have that sluggish feeling. I don’t want to get the board. I don’t want to think about placing the mat over its slim end. I look around. Everyone is hopping to it. “Oh boy,” one woman says to her helper/buddy. “I can go home and really have fun with this!” I’m think’n, “I’m not even interested.” And yet I am interested. Even more interested than the excited woman. I care with all my being. I could cry I care so much. 126 �The white flowers startle and I’m interested. But not with my whole being. ❍ A man who goes on bird walks. He wants to know the name of . . . The leader just wants to say her spiel and get on with things, other people, lunch. The man, on a scale of one to ten, is how interested in the answers to his questions? (But he doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s interested. He thinks of himself as a curious person and likes that about himself.) He also likes the words that come with the leader’s explanations. ❍ Tweet tweet. Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet. Tweet tweet. Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet. Tweet tweet. Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet. Now this conversation is interesting. I think everyone will agree (if you’re being honest with yourself). It’s completely fascinating. The only reason you’d stop listening is if it stopped or if you were pulled away. 127 �❍ The woman upstairs shrieks into her portable phone. She wanders on and off her porch screeching Punjabi at the top of her lungs. Probably she thinks, “No one speaks Punjabi. I can yell as loud as I want.” I’m think’n, “Who in their right mind would listen to anything said to them in such a tone of voice.” More compassionately: “She probably senses that people don’t respect her so she screams, figuring decibel commands (if nothing else). But it doesn’t elicit, and on some level she’s aware of this.” I hear her pace the floor. Other people are there, but hers is the only audible . . . I hear young footsteps. I’m figur’n she’s what — maybe fifty? 128 �The yellow sky and its descendants The yellow sky and its descendants. And mine. Mine too. “I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t remember the name of the book or the writer. I like being a member though. Mainly we talk. Have a bite. I’d read anyway.” Her mother had always liked to read, but increasingly over the years, she’d read for larger and larger chunks of the day. “I’m boring. I know that,” she’d interjected suddenly. “Everyone I know keeps very busy.” ❍ “Termites,” she’d said. “Her house has termites, so she cancelled her trip to Alaska. Termites are very expensive.” She’d said it in a tone that implied that few people would be able to afford the luxury. “But JoAnne can afford it, can’t she, mother?” “Termites are expensive,” her mother repeated. ❍ “Would you like me to leave you a card that says what I do,” the young woman had asked. It was a gesture of kindness. She knew her mother admired her and talked 129 �about her to others. She also knew that when people asked what she did, her mother could never quite remember. “I took her card but now I can’t remember what I did with it,” her mother had said. She had just asked about Camille’s line of work. “It has something to do with acting,” she’d answered. “She lives in L.A.” She herself had never known Camille, but appreciated her consideration and sweetness to her mother. “She teaches acting maybe. I think she teaches acting to disabled children. She’s very good at it.” She wondered how her mother knew. ❍ The morning emerged, sweet solemn unusual. Its tug. “Join me. Join me. Enter me here.” No birds cawed. No mowers in the distance. “Sharpen your breathing!” The teacher’s words through the heightening light. She had been looking forward to coming. Now, though she was here, a part of her was still looking forward to coming. 130 �Sun and cold crossed the room at the same moment. ❍ Jabbering. The Indian man sawed and the shavings slid through his porch planks onto her porch planks. “The Dow Jones . . .” his radio blared. She had rejected the idea of calling up to him — “Please turn down your radio and cover your floor” — thinking that he probably didn’t speak English. “Hey! The reporter’s speaking English. He’s fucking making an English racket.” Still, something in her refrained. Later, sweeping up the still-thick debris, she’d wondered. She didn’t feel anger. Normally she would have been enraged. ❍ A deep voice answered the phone. A workman’s voice, foreign and uneducated. “If you need to reach Valentino . . .” a machine began. Then someone picked up the line. The woman had told her to call her at her home number. Something about his voice said that she wasn’t supposed to hear it. She wasn’t supposed to know about that part of the woman’s life. 131 �❍ Wind whorled the day’s dusk. (Its dark clotted sound.) A pence. A sixpence. A penny for your thoughts. One was gum. The man’s memory. The seats, their undersides, a field of pink bumps. “What else?” “There used to be a man . . . he’d walk, carrying a radio. If he stopped he’d die (I told myself he’d tell himself).” “Was he friendly?” “I began to feel friendly. One day I approached him. He growled, literally snarled something unintelligible.” “Maybe he felt that talking would require stopping.” ❍ The woman snapped. Her gray wool sweater, rose short shorts, and her sense. Her endless line of reason. “What was her reason?” “Rhythm. Rhythm was her reason. Every so often she simply needed to. That’s all.” “Explode?” “Arrange a certain kind of attention to envelope her, swathe her, molest her again. She’d get punchy.” 132 �“Punchy?” “Her rightness commanded a focused block of time.” ❍ Fat and rosy. Her hydrangeas busted out. Facing the hill, they laughed, blushed, shed a few pale petals. “He fell,” she’d said. “He climbed up to fill the bird feeder and slipped. He’s okay now. He says hi.” She paused to catch her breath. “So as not to be outdone, I tripped on some wire leaving a store. I fell flat on my face. The owner had the wire covered but, you know, little notches stuck out.” She hardly knew what to say. “As soon as I got home I iced it and this morning it was fine!” “That’s amazing mother!” She’d gathered her courage. “Is your face okay?” “I didn’t hit my face. I put out my hand. It was my knee that got the brunt of it.” ❍ “It’s very dry here,” she’d answered. “All the lawns are parched and there are no flowers.” Her mother’s voice cracked. “We’d be lost without our sprinklers.” 133 �“Are you rationed?” She’d thought of California. In times of drought, people were embarrassed to water their lawns. “They said it wasn’t necessary. It’s depressing to see the grass turn brown.” She knew the feeling. Still, the image of her mother’s kelly green yard, sprinkers going in the midst of a water shortage . . . 134 �Horsetail clouds Horsetail clouds whip from the south. Their sound on contiguous water. Enjoying the early sun, the beginnings of heat in the still-cool day. No birds. A dog bounds up a hill, hauling his master. The hill is steep. The dog seems fine, but the man? From the way he stoops, it seems he is in pain. Mainly she wondered if he excused himself, as she did, from little things (the “correct” parts of something). Her teacher, for example, had given her a mudra, a sequence of movements that cumulatively built up heat. At several points in the sequence one’s arms were raised. First you swallowed, then slowly lowered your arms as you expelled the breath. “Swallowing forces the energy down,” her teacher had explained. Which made sense. Yet each time she got to the place where her arms were raised and she needed to swallow, she’d either forget or excuse herself. ❍ “The daffodils look stupid,” she thought gazing at the crabby hill. “Dressed for a summer day . . . 135 �“Poor things,” she’d added, leaning over the rail, getting a feel for the squeamish grass and trees. “It’s downright freezing out here.” Brisk chimes and the echo of wind. The choppy bay shoved unready air, which stumbled over itself. ❍ Most of his life he’d been a runner, he said. At sixtyfive, he still worked out each day in his home gym, but what really attracted him was yoga. “I go to a class and it’s all women. I don’t feel comfortable,” he complained. She pictured him in a typical studio surrounded by thirty-something, fairly limber women. Of course he’d feel uncomfortable. First Shiva. Then men men men. Initially women hadn’t even been allowed. “Still,” she thought, “the superstars are mostly male.” The realization had startled her. Her classes were filled with females yet her teacher and her teacher’s teacher . . . She wanted to think that women brought a certain delicacy to the practice, a sensitivity that men lacked. But when she thought about it, the few truly powerful women teachers were not that way. (She did know 136 �several exquisitely sensitive women teachers but they were not on the superstar track.) “Superstardom hardly precludes authenticity,” she mused to herself. Yet she’d noticed a pushiness (or drive). Maybe drive was a better word. “It’s different from aggression. Aggression is violent whereas drive is an inborn quality that simply expresses itself in the integrity of an individual presence.” Violence is added-on. (She was getting it.) Naturally it would be featured in a culture that exalts adornment. ❍ The dubious hill. The silent banner of the hill. Okay. Think about silence. “That moment in the morning when I leave my room. No one is home. No one is around the building.” “How do you feel?” “I notice the quiet immediately. My bones relax. It’s a different kind of quiet from other times during the day.” “What’s different?” “It’s like steam. It’s as if the quiet can’t contain itself so it lets off something. A hum. It’s very peaceful.” “What else?” 137 �“God is present. I tiptoe about being very careful, very respectful.” “How can you tell?” “The air vibrates. ‘Om Shanti,’ it says. Even if a mower or gardener passes with a leaf blower or trimmer, let’s say, God’s silence isn’t affected.” “I’ve heard that at death, as the senses depart, one will still hear one’s loved ones, the sound of their thoughts, for example.” ❍ “Don’t just breathe. Feel the prana in the air and breathe in that,” the teacher had said. The air smelled like urine. The day was warm and it felt pleasant to be in class. Inhale. He had also said that balance was not just not falling over. “Balance is the stability of lightness,” he’d explained. “It can be scary. Sometimes, just when people find their point, they fall over.” She had had that experience. “Lightness is the normal human condition,” he’d said. 138 �❍ “Your back is straighter again this month,” her massage therapist remarked. “The curve is less severe and the hump has flattened. It’s almost unnoticeable.” “Long-term scoliosis is intractable,” everyone said. Spine-wise, she might straighten the energy, but the bones themselves would never change. It made sense but she wasn’t convinced. “YES!” her body screamed when she’d accidentally land in some stretch for which (it felt this way) she had waited all her life. She’d hang out for awhile, pulling inside. She was sure her bones were scrambling into alignment. (Listening to them tripping all over themselves, dashing toward their correct place.) A parent bird hears her unborn chick turn in its egg no more clearly than she the vertebrae of her lower left back. ❍ “Your bunions aren’t just bunions,” the rolfer pronounced emphatically. “They’re part of your scoliosis.” “As are your poor digestion, shallow breath, weird (shifty) energy.” 139 �“Oh my God!” (It made sense but she had never thought about it.) The curvature had been noticed by a seamstress who’d altered her childhood skirts. One side had been a full two inches shorter than the other. “Did no one suggest surgery?” Maybe they had. She couldn’t remember. Barely audible birds Barely audible birds. And sun. Like a wall. She’d rounded a bend, a narrow forest road. Sun-soaked branches patterned its tar. Rose-black, amber-black, cerulean-black. (The sudden hopscotch of yellowwhite.) Was it the curve, its swaggering “s,” a piece of time, roused, helpless in her body? “Probably it was a feeling stored in your body, not a time, wouldn’t you say?” “Rounding the bend, desperate and clutchy. Whereas at that moment I had just finished a yoga class.” “Describe the sense.” “ ‘Just get me home. Please!’ I was crazed.” 140 �“Or opened like a vessel so that when tilted, an old condiment (anxiety) had suddenly slipped out.” ❍ “My drawing teacher,” she’d begun. Veins of white threaded her pony tail. From her graying skin, the ricocheting sun. The woman’s age. Her smile. Once the class had sung her “Happy Birthday.” She’d turned around, faced everyone squarely. “Not everyone would be able to receive such a gift with so much composure — is that what you’re saying?” “There was no ‘Aw no’ or ‘Please, you shouldn’t.’ ” ❍ “The jaw and the genitals,” the teacher began. “They’re energetically connected. Someone tight in the jaw . . .” “TMJ + wild sexual fantasies?” “I ask my beginners to do Lion’s Pose,” he’d continued. “I say, ‘Don’t be shy. Give it your all.’ They spread their tongue on their lower teeth . . . It’s a cultural thing.” He’d paused. 141 �“The whole region of the head should be, like a balloon, inflatable. “The tongue, for example, is a muscle. When you stretch it, it becomes longer (easy to rest its tip on the soft palate).” He had previously explained just how far back the soft palate actually was. ❍ “Hello.” Her voice croaked. Dredged up from . . . (“I no longer feel nostalgic,” the thin man had said, staring into space. His words from some abyss.) “You’re early. Usually you call at ten after. I wasn’t . . .” her words evaporated. “How are you dear?” “How are you? How’s the weather?” “It’s beautiful. So cool. Right now there’s a breeze.” She’d paused. “Last week it was roasting. If you so much as opened the door . . .” She’d paused again. “Oh I know something that’s new. I volunteered at the library. I’m going to work at a neighborhood branch four hours a week.” “That’s great, mother! What inspired you to do that?” “You know, honey, every time I go to the big library, the people there are so sullen. I look around. No one 142 �seems happy. But at the small library where I sometimes go, they are friendly and eager to help. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to volunteer. It’s a great place to be.’ ” It seemed appropriate, somehow, that at the end of her life, her mother would work at a library. ❍ “The older I get, the less there is.” The thin man crossed his legs, gazed at the darkening sky. “I kick through feelings. And, like I said, I’m no longer nostalgic.” She understood. She had sometimes felt ashamed of her, of late, absence of nostalgia. When she’d finished something, it was finished. What pertained to it felt like a fetter. ❍ “She’s lost her youth,” the woman began. “She’s aged. She’s a doctor. She’s full into being a doctor.” It was said without a slur, but there was a slur. “She says she’s happy. That her marriage is happy. But she also says, ‘Well, I’m the breadwinner so . . .’ ” her voice trailed off. 143 �❍ “One Saturday morning — very early — a guy waved me over.” (The thin man was talking.) “I was running. He was on the other side of the road. ‘Hey,’ he’d said. ‘I just got out of prison. Been in prison twelve years.’ He had scars, a tattoo. A huge man.” He’d recrossed his legs. “His body needs to move,” she thought. “ ‘I got nowhere to go. No food.’ There was something wild about him.” He hesitated. “The guy almost cried. (I slipped him a twenty.) I could see he hadn’t quite expected it. Things like that. I’d miss that.” (He had been talking about maybe moving.) ❍ Evening ascends. Bronze light on the hilltop. Screech screech screech plus the wheeze of early crickets. “It’s too hot,” she’d said. “I get depressed when I can’t be in the sun for at least a little while.” Her mother’s skin had darkened. Olive-complected, she had, in the sun, simply turned olive-er. In her youth a white summer dress had been almost like a pearl. She recalled the pale shades. 144 �❍ “So her gifts were too shiny?” “Always. A ray off.” “Do you understand the sun? Are you a sun person?” “No. I like the sun hidden. I bask in its aftermath.” 145 �Tweet tweet Tweet tweet. Tweet tweet. (Despite the black eerie night.) Smokey clouds rumbled around the sky. “Sweltering,” the woman reported, feet immersed in bubbly soapy water. “Sweat simply dripped off me.” The woman’s voice, like a radio, drifted from the other room. “Of course it was beautiful,” her odd monotone continued. “We hiked. The wine country was fun but,” she’d stopped, “there was no air conditioning!” “Even in stores!” The manicurist seemed astounded. “Well, the hotel lobby was coolish. I’m sure in Milan (pronounced Mee lan, rhyming with can) it’s different. There weren’t department stores or anything like that.” She’d paused. “It’s not something I’d repeat. I mean it was an experience. I’m glad I went.” Her voice trailed off. ❍ “Allow the ball of light in the agna chakra first to glow then gradually to descend purifying each body part. Roll it slowly around your throat, your heart, your lungs, your sacrum. Take your time. Get every spot.” 146 �Sun peeled through the blinds. It was Sunday. She had slept thirteen hours. Her teacher’s words, sucking them with her body, lozenge-like. ❍ Indian neighbors! The fact sat warmly. She had never lived in close proximity to an Indian family. For years she had lived amongst the Japanese (their sloppy-but-not-exactly-slovenly, at-home, ways). So used was she to the elegance (seen-ness) of their exterior, their quotidian noisiness had come as a surprise. But perhaps she was being too harsh. ❍ Mushy hill. The day, without sun, sagged. She’d dreamed she’d been in a hall, Othello-like, tiled and mirrored in green Egyptian splendor. Queenly beings roamed about, lavishly limbed and dressed. Her aunt was announced. She was dark black with choppy hair. Though richly attired, her posture was obsequious. “Your mother is dead.” (The pronouncement from the court.) At first immobile, she had doubled over and 147 �sobbed. It felt like an earthquake, an impossible disaster, yet she alone need experience the blow. The shock had awakened her. Strange. Its residue was not horrific so much as exotic, foreign, inaccessible. ❍ “I don’t like to ingest things,” her mother had recently said rejecting acetyl l-carnitine as a memory stimulant. Her esophagus randomly burned. While she sympathized with her mother’s hesitancy, besides ginkgo biloba, not much was available to supplement one’s mental faculties, which were causing her endless frustration. Also, her phrase, “I don’t like to ingest things,” seemed, somehow, out of character. “Do you feel alone in the world,” she had asked a woman whose mother had recently died. “No. I just miss talking to her,” the person had answered. “I would sob at her death yet I don’t particularly want her to talk to her,” she’d thought. “That she’s there, that I know that she’s there, supported and content. But that would be true in death also.” (An Iago-like character danced around her extremities.) 148 �She tried to imagine what it would feel like to miss her living mother. A mother she knew was taking her son on a trip to help him pass the days while his father was away. She pictured the little boy missing his father terribly. But the picture was just a picture. ❍ In her dream there had been a quilted jacket. The memory of its soft cotton breast. A building had swished back from the street, an endless row of odd-shaped apartments. “This one is available,” the Indian owner had said pointing to any number of cavernous openings. He owned a similar building across the street. She tried to keep her attention on her purpose of renting a room but it kept shifting to the bolts of tie-dyed, quilted fabric he had stacked in floor-to-ceiling shelves. Vividly recalling her jacket. Imagining its sleeves. Rubbing her arms to re-feel their softness. ❍ “Pull the chi from your feet through the knees to the kanda,” the teacher began. So poetic were his instructions that she had trouble imbibing their meaning. 149 �Lavishing their resonance, clinging to the sounds. Sometimes she’d fall behind. So it was a risk. She did want to hear. But the sounds were . . . irresistible actually. “Now withdraw your senses.” he continued. “Allow the front of your spine to act as a magnet. Affix each sense solidly, then focus your attention at the third eye.” A warm feeling spread like butter over her chest and arms. ❍ Daisies! A bright yellow bunch in a gold-foil pot. “A little summer color for you, my darling,” ran the yellowpaper note. Tiny green buds, leafy green fingers, plus the still-green centers of the more mature blooms. Usually daisies were white. The shock of their laughter. ❍ Thin, spry, willowy. The woman’s long black braid scrolled down her spine, signing her Buddha t-shirt like a seabird’s wing signs waves. Beads at her throat. Rings on her toes. One toe had two. “Take your time,” she whispered. It came as a surprise. Such a simple instruction yet her body responded, instantly. 150 �“Take your time,” only this time louder. She’d sensed the effect and wanted to prolong it. “What a wonderful teacher,” she’d thought as she managed to stay balanced in the awkward position. Previously the woman had adjusted her arms slightly. “I wonder how she knows that half an inch would make such a difference?” Simple and tight, her braid rested on her back. When she’d had braids, they’d shed their hairs. Little spiky ends would fly all over. In the front, instead of lying flat, cowlicks had poked every which way. She’d felt disheveled. A mess. “Mess” still served as her default self-curse. 151 �Black dawn Black dawn. The sky growled. An old man with his puppies hovered in the approaching rain. Drops, first thin, just a misty film across her windshield. Could it simply be an especially wet morning? More drops. She’d turned on the wipers. Sure enough, after each swipe of the rubber blade . . . She was headed towards the mountains. Later, heading back, thick fog curtailed her vision. Rounding a bend in a blanket of whiteness. A cyclist wearing red swerved in small “s” patterns as he huffed and puffed over a crest. The rain had slowed but the trees spewed their heavy drops. Thud. Thud. “Makes it hard to keep his balance,” she’d thought, worrying for him. ❍ The yogi wore black. Her sweater, tights, socks absorbed the morning sun that spilled in through the sliding screen. “He selects his stones carefully,” she said. “I looked on the web. Called other jewelers. All of them are expensive.” 152 �She’d remembered that the last Vedic astrologer who’d read her chart also was a jeweler. The ups and downs of her mistrust. ❍ Gregorian bells. Their rustling as the day dropped behind the deer-strewn hill. “It could be a carpet. It could be woven in Victorian wool,” she’d thought gazing over the pine and tall mustard-colored grass. “Will you teach me pranayama,” the woman asked softly. She had just pushed this person to prepare herself for a task for which she was capable but hadn’t felt capable. Now . . . And yet it felt right. To grow into the position. To become the person that could. “Visualize a small blue flame at the base of your spine. At the crown (and hovering just above it) is a glowing fire. Allow the fire to suck up the flame (as a person would a straw). Then let it melt away, leaving a residue of silver thread.” While the teacher’s instruction was vibrant, opening to it, allowing it to seep, gradually, into her bones . . . 153 �❍ “What I like about a person is her ability . . . like to be in a room. I think I want to write about being in an empty room.” She’d pictured him at his wooden desk, writing with a pen. Alone with words. “The older I get the less I want to go out,” he’d said, warming to his subject. “My friends are just who they are, I guess. We don’t have to ‘do’ anything.” “Hang out. There’s an art to hanging out, I guess.” An old black jacket draped at his sides. He’d just been running. An orange baseball cap clung to his still-damp head. “I used to drink. When I stopped I started running. Now I can no longer find the point.” ❍ “She eats and eats. It’s out of control,” the mother said. “There’s no end to her consumption.” The girl had just been jilted. “I buy food. It’s gone. A whole pizza, gone!” She’d paused. “Ice cream. Quarts. I can’t buy anything.” 154 �“She’s trying to stay alive.” (She was trying to help the mother.) “What about respect? She thinks of no one but herself. Should I tolerate this?” (Her voice lowered.) “Her only relationship is with food. That’s all she cares about.” “The psyche needs to conserve its energy.” She’d said this. Inside, however, she’d worried terribly. ❍ “2607. That’s the building all right,” she’d said to herself. No door, no windows. “Lots of people have to get in somehow.” Stairs on the left led nowhere. On the right, however, a path ended at a phone. She tiptoed around the garbage. Just as she’d arrived, two sari-clad women stepped through a gate. The decrepitude, the filth, the disarray. Clearly the building’s owner was letting it fall apart. It felt uncomfortable to be here, even briefly. It crossed her mind that the astrologer himself could be the owner. 155 �❍ Her sleeves, their slight flare at the wrists and sheer crinkly fabric accentuating her thin exotic body. “Until I was eighteen I lived in Communist China,” she’d said. “Was your family Communist?” “No. I was raised a Christian. Only my parents’ understanding of Christianity was slim.” She tried to imagine harboring a Christian thought in what she knew about Mao’s regime. “Oh I just told myself it’s brainwashing,” she’d commented. “I was never affected.” 156 �The year without butterflies The year without butterflies. Hearing a woodpecker in the night, she’d remembered the missing Monarchs. Astride the hill, beneath one dead overhanging branch. A pine grows. Its fluffy needles brush the sunny afternoon. An Indian woman rushes down the street clutching her sari. Its indigo/sky-blue firing the bus stop while a skinny woman reads. Still there’s a breeze. An island for dogs and wet cool air. Both drag sand from places. The god’s dead skin melting in the mountain sun. Yellow sapphires had sprouted she’d read. Yet the scarcity of butterflies, yellow skin aside. Tigers too. Their yellow skin. Her yellow skin. Everyone’s untempered concern. ❍ She had overslept (though it seemed more like the sun was slow and she’d kept dozing, waiting). By the time she’d risen, the birds were quiet. White sky, nests, and the carcasses of trees. Their silhouettes in the silent morning. 157 �She could feel them in the trees, the bush, the outskirts of the hill. “Probably because their hearts beat so fast,” she’d told herself repeatedly. The vibration of their hum. “Little voice galaxies.” Coming from them it felt more hers. “A cockle shell is always special. One feels blessed, picking it up, listening, actually hearing the pulsing sea.” “I’m struck with how a general sound, like a caw or sigh (from the ocean, say) seems more personal (meaningful to me) than a more specific one maybe even addressed to me.” “Vagueness = space. I relate to that. (Locate myself within it.)” ❍ “Hari Krishna. Hari Om.” It was far away in the city but the sound of their chant, cymbals, drums. Even as she woke, long before the parade. Crickets, seething heat and their song. (Though she’d read that the air, its essence, is purest at 4:00 a.m.) The energy of the feast (their love of god so fresh). 158 �“A Hari Krishna person once proselytized me at an airport. I gave him money I didn’t have. I wish that hadn’t happened.” ❍ Heat bristled. Leftovers from the high noon sun shattered in early shadows. Childrens’ cries, their broken wails like wolves on an August night. “Help!” The shriek and pace childish. “No no!” Yelps. (Someone’s getting dunked.) “It’s almost dark. Strange that they’re swimming so late.” A monotoned male drones through the woodwork. His canned, carefully-trained, din. “Did you see the woman’s face?” (She meant her new Indian neighbor.) “I called upstairs. There was no answer.” ❍ An empty room. His. Aloneness at its peak. His ability. Flying in no alone moment but in its spacious quality, gently, delicately, being him. Someone comes over. An awkward beingness having now to come to terms. 159 �Knees knock. White stripes and cap. Their shabby clinging to what was. ❍ “The other man puffs himself up. Trying to be seen. Please. He says.” “How can you tell?” “I fall asleep. My eyes become sooooo heavy. His alert head only notices what’s inside it.” “So when he says, ‘I feel your respect,’ he’s talking about himself — what he feels visualizing himself visualizing him.” ❍ Alone. On the hill. A single white daffodil. “It looks like a blown-away piece of laundry,” she thought, gazing at the cold, brown grass. “There used to be a row of them, all perky and sweet.” In her book a girl (perky and sweet) had been raped at dawn while walking to a festival. She and a friend were skipping down the road, all elated in their bracelets, henna, song. Probably they were filled with things to tell each other. 160 �Later she’d hung herself. The thugs had mistaken her for the real woman they’d been hired to attack. The whole thing had been instigated by a man who wanted power. He’d racked his brains. Finally he’d rekindled an old point of contention. Feelings ran so deep and so broad on this well-cultivated issue, that the needle seemed unlikely ever to land in his precise corner. “I just keep thinking about the giggling little girls.” ❍ A young girl’s body, bloated with food. “Got’cha!” “Her war. Her everyday ‘2 fruits, 2 vegetables’ versus ‘fuck it’ — which — neither makes her happy.” “She tries to distract herself. Assure herself it’s not important.” “Or that it’s extremely important. The only thing of importance!” ❍ “She became so tired. I gave her the briefest instruction. We sat for about five minutes. She was wiped out!” 161 �“I get tired. But I hadn’t allowed myself to feel the exhaustion until I saw her do it. I tried to break it down. Only give her the bare essentials.” “You underestimate preparedness. Energetically the body has to be made ready.” ❍ “Ganesh. God of wisdom. Remover of obstacles. Elephants are the wisest of all beasts.” The teacher’s sharp thin body. Her perfect Sanskrit “r.” The coral echo in her Om as she led the chant. “I was beat. The heat, ants, deluge of facts. I was just lying there half asleep, but dying to know about Ganesh.” “I bet you thought White Tara or Green Tara would be your deity.” “It was strange. When I got home from the Vedic astrologer, I saw three different images of Ganesh in my room.” “Was it the animal part that had put you off ?” “I’m aware of shunning explicit animal energy, though I like fish (their silent light).” “The energy of Ganesh resembles that of Sanskrit, its four stages of arising.” 162 �❍ “A tone and can I be there for its various impregnations? Can I ride it like a wave the sea-floor’s mountainous range? Eon after eon and maybe a tip will emerge. If so, we get all excited.” “Birds know way beforehand.” “Seabirds hunt the bottomlands. Their peaks and valleys. They read them, smell them, sniff them, sway to them.” “A cliff ’s demise. Miles below the surface. Is its moan the cockle’s? The longing could have been.” 163 �Redwind daylong daylong “I don’t like people touching me,” commented the yogi in response to her complaints about a workshop that’d been organized around participants assisting each other in poses. While she grasped the rationale, the class had seemed an endless series of technicalities, switching places, talking. “It’s nice inwardly to feel out the nuances of one’s own correct alignment,” she’d added, encouraged. The more she thought about it, the more cheated she’d felt. “I don’t want strangers touching me,” the yogi repeated, brushing herself off, as if someone just had. ❍ “Rubato. Do you know what that means?” The teacher was emphatic. No one replied. “It means rubbery. If you’re playing music and the score says ‘rubato,’ you mentally keep the rhythm but you stretch it in an expressive way. Pranayama is the same. You stay with your breath, but not stiffly. Not like a log.” “The body is filled with rhythms,” he’d added. A healthy person’s hums. Notice in yourself.” 164 �She had actually. But she’d related it to sensitivity. Her mother, for example, vibrated at a very high speed. “She’s tuned like a viola,” she’d mused many times, somewhat in awe of her. ❍ “My bones are the vestibules of touch, or used to be” she thought to herself. If a masseuse, let’s say, had failed to apply enough pressure . . . “Err on the intense side. I’ll tell you if it’s too much,” she, once upon a time, would have rushed to instruct. She touched words. Not the word, but the word’s aura (the astral word). Massage, she thought, should be the same. “Massage isn’t massage,” she mused. “It’s a transference of consciousness. Everything depends on (1) the masseuse’s understanding and (2) the depth and harmony of the connection.” The odd part was that she was just figuring this out. ❍ “Agapanthus,” the woman had said handing her two long-stemmed ones. “Their root-balls are gritty, but their blossoms . . .” She knew. Patches of them grew wild along the edges of her hill. 165 �She’d put the two in a vase. Their fragility and cosmic sweetness. ❍ Wind roared. Chimes banged. A lingering racket at the day’s end. A baby eucalyptus slinked through the iron bars. “I’m scared,” said the thin man. He’d been sick, and before that, awake for three days visiting a friend. “I’m scared,” he repeated. His emaciated frame, shiny skull, book bag, glasses. ❍ “Wine! They’re wine-colored this year!” Her hoya had sprouted its tiny waxy blossoms. She’d glanced at her hydrangea recalling the salesperson’s advice. “Different foods create different colors.” She hadn’t fed it. Its blossoms were a stunning violet-pink. She had randomly used the word “memoir.” But “late bloomer.” For him, that’s what it was about. 166 �❍ “Crystal meth,” the man had said. “The whole northern part of the state is being affected. Jackson. Sonora.” She knew someone in Sonora who met the description to a “t.” “They crinkle their mouths.” (He imitated the look.) “They lick their lips and chomp their jaws. Constantly. Also they age. No matter how young, they start looking haggard.” ❍ “Viyasa said that pranayama is the greatest of all tapas (purifying acts),” the teacher explained having gathered the class in a small circle around him. “How does this work? We have less avidya.” “Ignorance of our true self leaves an imprint on the body/mind. We experience it as a contraction (me). Pranayama creates a psychic relaxation. It moves the chi. Loosens avidya up.” Yet she’d veer off — “Oh I don’t need to do that” or “I’ll just skip that part.” 167 ��book four ��Green hydrangeas Green hydrangeas! For several weeks now she had noticed the chartreuse cast to her potted flowers. “Soon they’ll turn pink like the first blossoms,” she’d thought, though she rather enjoyed their sweet, pale, celery-like color. The chill had slowly drained from the day. “September is the hottest month,” she schooled herself, getting ready. She looked more closely at her hydrangeas. Certainly they were no longer sprouts. “They really are green,” she’d exclaimed with irrational satisfaction. Pig! Her heart jumped. The little squiggly letters leapt out with intriguement. Not the dry, meaningless forms on a page that meant nothing to her except a task she 171 �couldn’t master. Here was a lovely pig and “pig,” the word, resonated, and the sound had letters that she could learn both to say and write. Indeed, learning (anything) was so hard, that it was hard to learn that it was hard to learn. There was a mouse too. And a foot. Her chest exploded. Dusk and its sounds. Her neighbor’s television blared. Lights popped on from distant windows. The ease of being. Without talk. Without the sound of ease. “Sri K. Pattabhi Jois says, . . . it is not good to talk too much. By talking too much, the power inherent in the tongue decreases and the power of speech is destroyed. (Though I’m not sure I understand what he means by ‘power inherent in the tongue.’)” “Like stones, sounds contain the residue of those to whom they’d belonged.” “The sound of rain. Or a mantra. Listening to the sound of the Sanskrit alphabet sung by one’s teacher in a jingle.” “Clouds and paths. Their sound to a walker. Crickets and children on a summer night.” 172 �“The plop of a pea to the ear of a mother whose son is far away.” Her thoughts turned to Krishna, how he’d taught that one comes to yoga in her life only by having practiced it in a previous life. “She is pulled toward it against her will, like a magnet,” he’d said in the Bhagavad Gita. “I think of a vase. Its space. The line that shapes it.” “A bird’s chirp. What’s more shapely?” “The sun’s square shadow on a browning slope.” “It’s the building,” she’d thought. “Lines compiling lines. The streak of a bird across their trajectory.” “Were there birds before this?” “Birds exist in real time. (Before the bird comes time for the bird.)” “Bird’s eggs. An albatross chick takes a very long time. It makes one hole, then another.” “Its parents meanwhile ‘talk’ to the egg. First through the shell, then through the holes in the shell.” 173 �“But they stay out of it. They are there, but they do nothing.” “The real time of their voice, through the shell, pulls the chick, against its will, like a magnet.” 174 �Quiet. The suddenly-silent night with its churning train Quiet. The suddenly-silent night with its churning train. Mustard grass blazed on the hill. (The occasional caw and somersaulting leaves.) “Could they be squirrels?” (She peered at the cluster.) For a moment it seemed so. But then, from their scurry, their bobbing twitchy necks, it was clear they were sparrows. She’d looked out at the trees, tall, spare, gracefully arched toward the sky. They reminded her of a painting. The “painting” had been a silk-screen. She’d seen it at a friend’s. No green. No sky. Just the inner world of slender wood. “This this this. It all goes,” she’d periodically said to herself, ripping through her belongings. With “for sure” piles, “maybe” piles, plus a strictlyenforced lag time, she’d rarely err. She had erred, however. The silk-screen was one. There had also been a jacket that someone had made for her out of lush Indonesian fabric. 175 �Shabby dawn. From a door left open during the night, cold morning air crept stealthily across the room. She stood in the squalor near a skinny cat whose muddy nose was shriveling. Noses musn’t shrivel, said the yogi. (She was reading.) The five elements — earth, water, fire, air and space — are found in localized spots on the nostrils’ inner linings. A person can, by channeling her breath, affect the quality of her consciousness. “The little rounded bumps on your noses’ sides should be soft and passive,” the yogi continued. With your fingertips, gently stroke them downwards. Then release as you inhale.” “Could this be true also for cats?” “You have a fine hand,” the astrologer had said, tilting it toward the light. “You’re intelligent, yet practical. You will live a long life. Only your health and your relationship will be a problem.” He’d released it, seeming satisfied that she’d be pleased. But she had not been prepared to hear about her dismal health nor her relationship. 176 �“Yet the point is to know so that one can make better choices,” she’d reminded herself as she slowly walked to her car. “It’s not a verdict. It’s a warning.” Her whole purpose for the visit, in fact, had been to collect a sapphire that, after it was set, could be cleansed and blessed to ward off these very influences. “A stone is sullied,” the astrologer had explained. “Just as a baby is born with mucus and blood and needs to be bathed and dressed for this world, a stone needs to be washed from the effects of its former life. A pooja ‘wipes the slate clean’ so to speak.” “For these ten days I fast and do my spiritual practices. But I will try anyway to do the pooja,” he’d generously offered. The yellow stone, pale and huge, sat between the jeweler’s fingers. “It’s almost too big,” she’d thought. “I’ll never be comfortable with something so garish.” The astrologer had said she could get a pendant instead of a ring, but (as the jeweler pointed out) a pendant wouldn’t always touch her body. (Which had made her wonder why the astrologer had said it would be okay.) 177 �Night traverses night Night traverses night. A few city lights had crept through the pane. A suckling. Some staves of bamboo. How much time have you got? The time of black. Its depth and how much a person charges. “Is time free?” “The person who thinks so.” “Settlements founded on this basis.” A woman talks and then makes sure to unsay everything. Another talks. She feels bad about it later. Another uses the radio instead of her own voice. “What does adamantine mean?” one asks. “Diamond-like. Hard to cut. Hard to take away from itself.” The aluminum gleam of an early morning sky. Against the dun-colored earth. Its pungent odor. “No. I can’t talk now. I am very busy with my prayers,” the astrologer had said. She’d called to find out if she 178 �could bring her stone (now that it was set) for a pooja during his week of fasting. “You can’t come. You come the next week. I do early Thursday morning.” Probably he had been irritated by his wife’s demand that he take the phone. Still, once he had taken it, and especially were he immersed in prayer, his tone, it would seem, would reflect prayer. Instead it was grouchy, annoyed, perturbed. She’d heard the background voices of his wife and daughter like chickens in a crowded barnyard. “He asked me to call,” she muttered to herself. “He said he might have time. I mean I wish he’d just said, ‘Forgive me. I’m praying. It would be inconvenient to have an interruption just now.’ ” “Prosad. Prosad.” The Indian woman had passed her a gift. “What an honor to receive this blessed food,” she’d thought as she cupped the sweetened balls. She’d felt relieved to have delivered the jewel. “Don’t worry,” the Indian jeweler had told her. “See this watch.” He’d pulled up his cuff. “A thief would take this before they’d bother with your stone. 179 �She’d glanced at its tiny box. It said “22 carats.” “Is 22 the highest amount of carats,” she’d asked, uncertain of how to respond. “24 is the highest, but it’s too soft for your purposes.” He’d paused. “We need to secure it on your arm once the pooja’s done, so please come back.” He had been through the long decision-making process of how she, who disliked rings and pendants, could wear such an ostentatious gem. Slow light melting slow cold. Recalling drab cold days. The ones that followed sparkling sunny days. Puffy dolphin-shaped clouds sailed above the town. “Only autumn,” she felt, “could have an ‘Indian summer.’ ” Which depended on the brevity and elegance of brief elixir dawns. Dark bells. Musty grass harped at the sky. “It’s winter, man.” (That’s what the sky said.) 180 �“It certainly smells like winter,” she’d thought, glancing at the swarthy air. Jays squawked. “Why are they so crabby?” The jeweler from India — he was not crabby. Twice he had generously offered to help. Strange. He’d said what he’d had to say and then just stood there, which had a tender feeling. “Don’t leave your purse,” he’d advised when she’d walked to another part of the store where a mirror stood. “I had my wallet stolen that way. And from my own shop!” She’d appreciated the reminder. Once her purse was stolen from a shopping cart at the supermarket. “It hurts,” she had instructed herself again and again, but apparently not enough. 181 �Daybreak Daybreak. And the noises of daybreak. “How are you, dear?” Her mother’s voice, sodden and foreign. “We were talking to the neighbors across the street. I forgot you were going to call.” “How are they doing?” She knew she was fond of them. “They’re moving to Colorado. To be with their children. And their grandchildren when they arrive.” (This last was barely audible.) “Our neighbors to the left are also moving. I’m just waiting for the ones on the right . . .” “Are you close?” “We talk. Like now. Standing on the street. They’re very nice people.” Her mother’s delivery had dropped. She could imagine that poof, three neighbors gone . . . , but each time she’d primed herself to hear her disappointment, she’d hedged. “The road was a shimmering blue-black stripe scored in the red soil.” She’d read the sentence how many times? Its author, David Davidar (once a journalist) lived in New Delhi the jacket-cover said. 182 �“I mean like everything’s the same.” (The thin man had been talking.) “This guy I knew, he’d gone home one day, poured kerosene over himself and struck a match. Nice guy too. Really nice. But you know, what’s the difference between that and ‘Hey, what’cha hav’in for breakfast?’ ” She knew what he meant. “I mean people do what they do. We can make it mean this or that but in the end it doesn’t change anything.” “Ah. Ah. Ah.” Her hand formed the vowel. Again and again. Each time she’d whisper it. Its lines, curves, patterns on the sheet. And in her body. Etching them into her body. “Connective tissue, infused in every cell, is slow to stretch,” her book had said. “But if you soften the surrounding muscle, it helps.” Sanskrit was the same. If she’d turn off her mind, her body would absorb it. If she grasped, her pores locked. She could feel them clamp shut. “Use your breath, not your muscles,” the teacher had scolded. People were fading in the long hold. When, after about three minutes he’d added, “Get 183 �comfortable. We’ll be here awhile,” someone had laughed out loud, as if she couldn’t even imagine the idea. Letting her breath do “horse.” Through the window an old Japanese woman rounded a bend. She looked strained. “Asanas have a built-in nobility,” she murmured to herself as she watched the woman suffer. Her walk was right (she’d mastered the stride) yet it generated (she hated to say it) stupidity. It had to do with body integrity. “Ninety percent of yoga is creating the right context for yoga,” her teacher mentally droned as she drove home from the long, slow class. Traffic too was slow. “Unlike the squirrel who bounds up the pine,” went her uncanny connection. The tree was young. Its bark undeveloped. “It couldn’t be grip. But it couldn’t be muscles either,” she’d continued, trying to imagine what in the squirrel let it scramble, circus-like, straight up the trunk’s belly. Then again she’d seen it on its haunches, nibbling at a nut, a little spastic (very busy). Its constant glances. Its fluffy tail flicking. 184 �“Squirrels are in a hurry,” she’d thought, picturing one traversing her fence’s spikes. While its skill was yogic, its nervousness bothered her. Their relentless purr. These beasts from the bush. So much song pressing on, pressing on. She awoke to their trill, a miasma of calls. It was 4:50. A cricketless sky, striated cobalt, had gradually exposed itself. Driving east she’d caught phantoms harkening, braying across the scarlet grass. “Were they trees?” “No. They were shapes. Blobs. Eerie, black, ghosts.” “I’ve had too many Alaskan hamburgers,” said the yogi back from a sunny summer. His nauli lacked its usual sharp clicks. “When it gets easy, you’ll want to do one side, then the other, then a swirl, then reverse directions.” He’d started to demonstrate. That’s when he’d stopped. “Up there the air is cold. Working outside makes you hungry.” “Denise was ravenous. I’ve never seen her eat so much,” he’d continued thoughtfully. 185 �She’d tried to picture poised Denise scarfing down a plate of food. Heretofore he had used the word “feed” for “eat.” Imagining Denise “feeding” . . . Autumn noon. A frail caw, a cat, crickets (barely audible over the hum of distant cars). An owl mood. Shrieks of kids from the next-door pool. Since her room squared the hill, their noise muffled rounding her building’s corner. 186 �Sea oats “Sea oats. So that’s what they’re called!” She looked at the brown feathery flags waving over the beach. Its sand was moist and the white rippling surf sparkled so she could almost smell it. Sea oats are everywhere protecting the fragile shoreline from the forces of nature, said the postcard’s inscription. Her mother’s note had remarked on how she’d particularly loved looking out at the beach and watching the sea oats sway. “The weather is gorgeous,” she’d added (verified by the card’s amazing sun) but when they had spoken, after her return, it turned out she had been sick. “What was the matter, mother?” “Oh I don’t know. It’s my esophagus thing. The doctor says everything’s fine, but as soon as I eat, it hurts.” “Were you sick for the whole trip?” “I couldn’t walk on the beach. You know how much I love to walk on the beach.” She’d stopped. “Daddy walked.” She’d said this in a tone that implied that since he had, a part of her was satisfied. 187 �“I’m read’n this book,” the thin man said, holding the rubberbanded paperback in his lap a little more tightly. “Four kids from a family of ten — killed, randomly! It’s written by one of the surviving brothers who’d moved away but then moved back.” She had commented once that when she drives through especially downtrodden neighborhoods, she’s aware that what the people on any one block do have is knowledge of everyone on the block. “So ya’ know. Sure you might know everyone on your block or couple of blocks. But they’re just people. They could still steal or kill your child.” She knew he was right. “You know these people all your life, but so what? You know what I mean?” Drops of rain awakened her. She looked at the clock. Only 1:30. “I have the whole night to enjoy the lovely sound,” she’d thought, snuggling deeper inside her covers. “I have GERD. Gastroesophageal reflux disease. They abbreviate it ’cause it’s such a long name.” Her mother sounded tired. 188 �“What is it exactly?” “When you eat you get a burning sensation in your chest. It feels like everything you swallow comes back up.” “Can you get anything down?” “Well, soup. If there’s nothing in it to irritate my throat.” Her voice trailed off. “Oh I know something,” her mother continued, her tone implying “Here is a ray of hope!” “I bought this gadget. It looks like . . .” she’d stumbled for a moment searching for the right word. “A remote control,” she’d finally resumed. “You colorcode in things that you tend to lose.” She pictured her mother trying to retrace her steps, forgetting what she’d done two minutes earlier, adding that to the frustration of losing her keys. “It’s perfect for people like me.” She’d paused. “When it beeps, I can’t always hear it.” “Would you like one, honey?” This, after a long silence. 189 �“I don’t actually misplace things often enough to warrant it, mother.” She’d hoped saying so wouldn’t make her mother feel bad. “Maybe there’s a way to turn it up,” she’d added (her edge of despair). “What concerns me, mother (I gather from what you say) is that you think you’re only interesting when you have something new to report. I’m interested in whatever you do. When you say you had soup for dinner, I find that interesting.” “I don’t. What’s interesting about that?” “Well, it’s what you do. Your life is interesting. You don’t have to do anything special.” “I think going skating or going to see friends is more exciting.” “Why?” “Oh I don’t know. There’s just more to talk about, I guess.” “I go to my doctor tomorrow,” she’d said when the subject of her esophagus reopened. He’d given her a shot. She knew (she’d said) it wouldn’t help, but “since she was there . . .” 190 �Her heart bled for her mother. “I’m belching all the time.” She’d paused. “He won’t help. Even when he gives me something, it doesn’t last.” “So he was drunk and he said, ‘I don’t want to be friends with anyone I can’t beat up.’ Keep in mind that this is a big guy. He was at his wits end.” The thin man was talking. He had on a bright blue shirt. “Aren’t you cold,” she had asked when he’d walked in. “It’s winter. It’s dark. Don’t you want a jacket?” “Naaaah. I’m used to it. My apartment isn’t heated. Compared to Atlanta, California never gets really cold.” “In Atlanta,” he’d continued, “it drops to 33. Then it rains. Noth’n out here ever gets that uncomfortable.” She knew what he meant. Sweet rain. The first of the season. The sky was black. The hill silent. 191 �“I wish you were coming home for my birthday.” The low voice of her mother rose up in her mind. “You know how I feel, mother. I’d just spoil the party.” (She herself wished she weren’t the person who detested gatherings.) “I know, but I still wish you would come.” Another time she would have pushed it. “Tell me more about your life.” (It felt like she had already forgotten her disappointment.) “I’m a monk, mother. I don’t have a personal life.” “I know, but I’m still interested.” 192 �The rocking sun The rocking sun. Back and forth across the thin man’s face. Dusk. Falling falling fallen. He’d gazed out at the sky. His tall silver building loomed above the criss-crossed roads. “I hate lights,” the thin man said. “People come over and I’m sitting in the dark. I like it like that.” As he spoke, lights from the city slowly grazed the room. Three birds chirped. Shiny scalp, elbows, the baggy clothes of a very thin being. “So I can’t make plans. I have no idea what I want. I’m flat,” he’d said after a pause. “Something comes along and I can feel if I want it. But if it doesn’t come along . . . I can’t imagine beyond what is right in front of me.” 193 �The gelid sky The gelid sky with its few poky clouds. No pink. A flat pale tan. She skirted the traffic. Remembering dawn. Its dimples over the hill. A rat had scurried across her porch in its first amber glow. Her hoya’s blossoms reamed the porch, scattered in wind-blown rat piles. Dogs and sand slugged the path eastward. Squirrels and a doe (leg torn, eyes bewildered) roamed the heavy bay. Several weeks earlier she had seen it with its mother, chewing leaves, sloshing through mud. Spelled by a particularly luscious bush, the deer had eased out of sight. A Monarch darted across its path. Usually millions of Monarchs feasted on the trees. “Where have all the others gone,” she’d wondered. “How are you, dear?” Her mother’s voice, hollow, scratchy. “You sound tired, mother. Did the phone wake you?” 194 �“No. I was up.” She’d paused. “I usually don’t take naps.” (It seemed she had run out of things to say.) “I wish my grandchildren were here. Do you remember, honey, how you used to go to Grandma’s?” “So what’s new, sweetheart?” Her mother’s voice seemed breathless, a little dazed. “Nothing much. How ‘bout you? Did you have a nice supper?” “I wasn’t really hungry. When I’m not hungry . . .” she’d paused as if she had just remembered something. “I had soup. The soup was good. I like soup . . .” Her words trailed off. “How are your hands, mother?” It had been a pity, the one day she’d worked at the library. “They’re the same. I see the doctor next week.” Suddenly she came into focus. “Your aunt Lilian’s fingers are all curled up. Her hands are like a ball.” Sobered by trees. (The leaning cypress.) 195 �She’d stood at the rail and watched a squirrel on the roadway, standing! It had been a rare moment, seeing it upright and so still. Possibly it expected cones. A fluffy pine slooped in the wind and frequently shed its handsome fruit near where the squirrel had positioned itself. Earlier, she’d caught the moon rocking. Usually, at so incipient a stage, its fingernail arc would tilt sideways. Since the full outline of its silhouette had been visible in the blackness, she had seen it resting in its sliversaucer, straight up, like the funny squirrel. Strange that she’d expect it to be crooked. 196 �Astrologers tell Chinese kings “Astrologers tell Chinese kings,” he’d said, “and rich people” he’d added after a pause, “that sixty (the age of sixty) is the beginning of adulthood.” He’d stopped to make sure she’d understood. “It means not responsible to anyone else. Just being who you are.” She’d pictured a sixty-ish Chinese woman padding around in cotton shoes. The man, an acupuncturist, had a Chinese wife. Who had a Chinese daughter. (Her utter lack of curiosity.) “Pssstt . . .” said the sign on the back of the truck. Which she had found very curious. 197 �Happy Birthday, my darling “Happy Birthday, my darling. I thank God for the gift of your life. With all my love.” 27. xi.02 The words were on a card from the J. Paul Getty Museum. A delicate botanical specimen is captured here in one of history’s earliest photograms, also known as a photogenic drawing. It was so named by William Henry Fox Talbot, a scientist, mathematician, and author who is credited with being one of the inventors of photography. Such ran the inscription. The photogenic drawing negative, Erica mutabilis, March 1839 was a William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800–1877) reproduction. She’d found its silvered mulberry veneer stunning. The card and the words of the card. She hadn’t realized that she was so loved. “You’re going to live to be a hundred!” the astrologer had screamed. When she’d gone to retrieve her gem, after its pooja, he was away. But his wife was home. She’d immediately dialed a number and handed her the phone. That’s when she’d heard the emphatic report. “I don’t care so much about a hundred,” she’d replied. In truth, when he’d intimated this before, she’d found herself annoyed. “I just need to accomplish what I want to accomplish.” 198 �“That’s what it means,” he’d instantly rejoined. If you live a long life, you’ll have time to do what you need. She could see the logic but the language irked her. A previous Vedic astrologer also had concluded an extremely auspicious chart by saying that she would be financially prosperous. “House and car,” he had said. She knew that this was simply an Indian’s way of exemplifying wealth, but for her, it diminished the full measure with which she could enjoy her good fortune. “The Dalai Lama rides an exercise bike!” (So said her new maroon and ochre book.) She was amazed. And relieved. Because she’d worried about him. She recalled the afternoon during recess from his class. He’d personally presented a kata to a group of American women participants. Just as she was thinking how silly they all looked performing their Tibetan dance, he’d walked up and wrapped a white silk scarf around each of their necks and bowed. Just before he was born, his mother had dreamed of snow lions (two green ones escorting a bright blue dragon). “Green is my favorite color,” stated the new book of His Holiness, beaming through his glasses. 199 �A portion of her previous night’s dream flashed through her mind. She had been chatting with two other women when she spied her partner on the other side of the courtyard, sitting in the sun reading. Suddenly she missed him very much. As she walked over to join him, she noticed that he, on seeing her approach, put a post-it note at his place in his book. “he’s glad I’m coming,” she’d thought, touched at his eagerness. The image of him sitting alone in the sun reading had stayed with her the whole day. In the dream, the sun’s rays acted as a halo. It was as if he were sanctified by the sun and that their coming together in this private (yet public) way was also sanctified. Drip drip drip. First sound. First light. Usually pink, today a narrow band of yellow had crept across her carpet. Her Buddha glowed. “He’s black!” she realized. How had it taken her so long to notice? “Where’s this from?” she’d demanded the moment she’d spied it toppled on its side. “Tibet,” the stall-person replied. She had been shocked that he even knew the word. 200 �Which made her believe him. (Obviously it was what he had been told.) “How much?” she’d asked. (Pause.) “One twenty-five.” (It was a particularly beautiful rendering.) So now she had three. The first had been a gift, a silkscreened scene from Buddha’s life. Amidst a covey of disciples, long-eared Buddha stood, one hand opened, the other raised. She’d draped it over a monitor where her gaze plummeted into the oval of Buddha’s lightly-touching forefinger and thumb. On top of the monitor sat a small bronze Shakyamuni whose detailing and expression she’d found gentle, sweet, inward. Beside this she’d placed a flower. And behind that, the wooden Buddha from the flea market. 201 �Fat sun Fat sun. Prune sky. “It looks like it’s going to be a nice day,” she’d said to herself hearing (and wincing at hearing) her new upstairs neighbors clanking around. Two small birds twittered in the bush. “They are lovely people,” the real estate man had retorted when she’d mentioned their noisiness. “They dote on their apartment. They’re a delightful couple.” When she’d referred to their Indian language, he’d corrected her. Strange. The fact that they were Russian put an entirely different spin on the situation. Wind browned the dangling branch, wedding its limbs to the air. “Where’s that tweed jacket,” she’d thought. She’d remembered its drape, the way it would swing around her body, then swish, bulkily, back into place. “I probably dumped it.” She dreaded looking in her closet. For awhile she’d had the rule of giving away the equivalent of any new addition so that the total size of her wardrobe remained the same. “I have a small closet. I’ll just stay within the means of my closet,” she’d thought. Eventually it got too costly. 202 �“I want a wardrobe with depth,” she’d reasoned, though suspected it was more like greed (the inability to resist buying something that she liked). But she found that she’d forget she had certain things and failed to love them. So she’d give them away and it made sense. In a later moment, however, it might not make sense. “Do you remember when you used to be enraged when someone commented on your clothes?” “I felt violated. As if a third party was intruding on an intimate colloquy. No matter who it was, I assumed they ‘didn’t understand’ and therefore had no right to comment.” “Pretty severe.” “I felt that people’s remarks were random. That they were ‘making conversation’ at my expense. (This was a serious subject for me.)” The sun had dropped behind the hill. “It’s only 4:30!” she’d muttered glancing at the darkening sky. The day, shrouded in mist, had shrunk to a few sooty drops. “I mustn’t forget to have new wipers installed,” 203 �she’d thought noticing the grime plastered over her windshield. Her mechanic had suggested a pair a year. Every year she’d say to herself, “What! Already!” She’d had the same internal dialogue about her shower filter. Having read that the city’s chlorine was unhealthy, she had dutifully purchased one. “It’s meant to serve an entire family. I’m just one person,” ran her rationalization the following fall for skipping the manufacturer’s recommended annual replacement. Now, as its third anniversary approached, she’d heard herself squirm. “Isn’t it supposed to beep when the filter is beginning to wear out?” 204 �Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Scathing crows reminding her of cats. And her dream set in an early morning. She had been vacuuming a field filled with mud and thick weeds. Each time she’d move to another of its “districts,” huge Alice-in-Wonderland cats stared her down with benign whiskered faces. Some had stripes. Some were pale yellow. But they’d seemed eerie and they’d frightened her with their secret intelligence. The night had been hot. Her neighbor’s t.v. blared. Noise, sweat and seething crickets had kept her awake. “Do they hum more in the heat?” She had been asking herself this question as she’d finally dropped off. It did seem that their comforting purr had more oomph on hotter nights, but that could be her imagination — that they were “complaining” for her. The truth was she didn’t even know for sure that crickets objected to heat. “For all I know they love the scorching weather!” she’d inwardly mused. “After all. Summer is their season.” Just then she remembered that on her calendar she’d marked the previous day as one with a full moon. Another facet of her dream — that the handle of her vacuum had been wet and despite the shivers in its 205 �electrical currents, she had been too lazy to put it down, get a towel and dry it off. Instead, she’d just plowed on, praying that “somehow” it would be okay. The socket to which it was plugged was loose. She hadn’t dared touch it. The whole seemed risky in the extreme, but she’d brushed the danger aside as if she could think it away. Funny. In her dream she was doing something that was not lazy, yet she was doing it lazily, to the point of endangering her life. “It would have been wiser to simply not do it or wait till a time when I could be more present,” she’d mused. Crickets and no moon. Gray-green clouds empty of debris. Dusk settled over the valley. “The idea that her kittens might be sacrificed by her mother — that in the hierarchy of values held by her mother the lives of kittens were certainly of less importance than, for example, Frank-san’s slightest whim — must have been alive to the girl before the animals were even born.” Such were her thoughts as she re-read the story1 by a casual friend of the child’s mother: 1. Inspired by A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro. 206 �Indeed, now that I remember the first conversation I had with her, that strange afternoon inside the shabby cottage, Mariko huddling over the pregnant cat curled up on the tatami and commenting, quite out of the blue, “She’s going to have kittens. Do you want a kitten?”, what strikes me most is how the child, ignoring my “Oh really? How nice . . . I’m sure they’ll all find nice homes,” became surprisingly insistent, almost demanding. How could I have failed to notice the anguish and despair arising from her helplessness in the face of (in her mind) certain disaster. By screaming at her mother that most unchildlike, “Why do you always go away with Frank-san? Frank-san pisses like a pig. He’s a pig in a sewer . . .” she made her analysis of the situation abundantly clear. If Sachiko’s own life was held in abeyance, it would be foolish to expect (and this is what did not escape Mariko’s perspicacity) her own or those of her kittens to be more highly regarded. There were many occasions where Mariko’s preoccupation (one could almost say obsession) with her kittens, for now there were three, Atsu, Mee-Chan and Suji-Chan, was in evidence, but by far the most poignant of these was the day of our outing. The outing had been planned to celebrate the imminent departure of Mariko and Sachiko for the home of Sachiko’s uncle. Frank-san for the moment was out of the picture. Sachiko, while 207 �procrastinating, giving her uncle a moving date and then doing nothing to prepare so that weeks after the established time she still had not packed a single item, held firm to her intention. She and Mariko would live in her uncle’s spacious house and Mariko would have tutors and private schooling. After all, wasn’t Mariko’s education what she must concern herself with above all else? The outing was designed to be one last day together at our ease. The lift up the mountainside had indeed proven spectacular, the picnic on top and the vistas on our little hikes exceedingly pleasant. Toward evening, after a department-store supper, we strolled through sidestreets in little hurry to reach the final tram depot. On one such sidestreet we chanced upon a kujibiki stand. Mariko instantly asked to play and noticing Sachiko’s reservation, I handed her a coin. Since Mariko appeared to be a child, the stand-keeper instructed her to close her eyes while drawing her ticket and visualize the big furry bear. Mariko: “I don’t want the bear. I want the basket” pointing to the back of the stall. The man shrugged. “All right, princess, close your eyes tight and imagine your basket. Ready?” The first time Mariko’s ticket won a flower pot. The second time she (now it comes back to me clearly) won a pencil. We were about to leave when Mariko pressed to try yet a third time. She seemed so desperate, so single-minded, her emotional intensity so unsuited to the “we-all-know208 �no-one-ever-wins-anything-serious” attitude with which most passers-by play. Mariko, just then, was not a mere passer-by but for whatever reason, both her mother and myself refused to see that. As luck would have it, on her third try Mariko won, not the basket but what the stall-keeper described as a “major prize.” This turned out to be a large wooden box. Made of smooth, unvarnished pine it was light, like an orange crate, and had two sliding panels of wire gauze. Mariko, thoughtful, inquired, “Couldn’t we carry the kittens in here when we go to Uncle’s? We could put down a rug. I’m sure they’ll be quite comfortable.” Sachiko wasn’t so sure but on reflection could picture it working as Mariko described. Several days later, however, Frank-san’s car was back and their plans had changed. They weren’t going to go to America immediately. Frank-san would put Sachiko and Mariko up in Kobe while he went to America to send for them after he found work. They were leaving tomorrow. Sachiko was quite agitated, throwing essentials into valises, boxes, whathave-you. She kept repeating that she couldn’t take everything. Some things would have to be left behind. She hoped I could use some of the things as they, many of them, were quite valuable. Mariko sat in the corner of the tatami playing with her kittens, expressionless. 209 �“Have you decided yet?” she asked abruptly. “We’ll talk about that later,” her mother began when Mariko broke in, “But you said I could keep them” and began to intone to me, “She said I could keep them. She promised I could keep them.” Sachiko turned toward her daughter, spotted the orange crate and yanked a kitten from the tatami, tossing it inside. Mariko was still hugging one of the tiny black kittens to her chest. She said nothing as her mother shut the other two inside the crate. Then she held the kitten out to me. “This is Atsu. Do you want to see him?” Mariko grabbed it away from her yelling, “It is just an animal. Like a rat or a snake. It’s just an animal.” She dropped the creature into the crate and left the cottage. Mariko, still blank-faced, shadowed her. Sachiko headed for the river. First she took one kitten in her hands and tried to drown it by holding it under the water. When after a few minutes it wouldn’t die, she put it back into the box and edged the entire crate into the river. To prevent it floating, she learned forward and momentarily held it down. Mariko watched, transfixed, from the top of a slope behind her mother. As the box began to bob its way down stream, it caught in some reeds, was freed by a current and continued its journey. Mariko ran along the bank, stopping to watch the box till only a small corner was visible above the surface. 210 �Sachiko, who by now was aware of her daughter’s presence, called to her before turning back to the cottage but her voice was the perfunctory voice of a weary mother doing what is expected of her. She shrugged her shoulders and walked back with the exasperated step of one who has experienced an unwanted delay. I turned in search of Mariko. Toward dusk I found her crouched on a bridge staring into the water. 211 �Sticks. Little poles. “Sticks. Little poles. They couldn’t have been more than this round,” the woman had said making her thumb and index finger into a ring. “At least this is how they were when he lived with us.” She’d looked down. It was easy to picture. “He’d stand in front of the refrigerator. He’d be there for the longest time. Finally he’d take a carrot.” She imagined the thin man, scantily dressed, poised in front of the fridge. He’d probably felt comforted by the purring lights and intriguingly colorful jars. “Later he started crying. I’d hear low sobs coming from his room.” “We put him to sleep,” the dark woman said switching the lotus-like cross of her legs. Long gray braids limply straddled their creases. “His little white body was so thin. Just a stack of bones.” Tears dripped down her face. “About a month ago he’d stopped eating. We got him some baby food, which (for awhile) he’d take. Then he’d refused even water.” 212 �She pictured the pitiful cat needing to die but not being able to. “We took him to the vet. Buried him. But I worried that his brain might still have been working.” The sun’s last rays shedding its pink behind a tree. “What tree? Not a hide-and-seek tree. No one would play hide-and-seek behind that tree.” “It’s skinny. But if you were desperate. If you knew the person was coming and you had to hide fast . . . “ “You could will yourself out of sight. I’m not sure how much a beanpole tree would help.” The thin man stretched his legs. He knew all about invisibility. Inside he was empty. Words, anybody’s, effervesced. Disappeared. He disappeared. (He’d stopped going to school.) He’d drive around. No one paid attention. So now, when he tries to learn, he has to focus really hard. 213 �“Do you think that’s why . . . well, I mean, the less he has, the less he needs to worry about.” “He’s good with the negatives. Knows what people don’t say.” 214 �Three birds Three birds. Their flutter in the cold sky though they said nothing. No tweets. Nothing. Two hummingbirds, one, and then right away the other, from place to place, very deliberate. “Is it their speed that makes it seem as if they know exactly where they’re going? Or maybe they do and what was once there, isn’t.” (The “Simon Says” quality of their partnership.) “We’d planned a reunion for the sisters.” Her mother’s voice rose up. “But at the last minute Jane got sick. This time too, she said she couldn’t come. So we called it off. But, you know, honey, she’s never really gotten along with Helen.” She’d paused. Her silence had no judgment. At an earlier time, the silence would have been pregnant with judgment. “She no longer talks to Rose. Until about a year ago they were inseparable. I’m sure it was something Jane did that caused the rupture.” It may well have been, she’d thought to herself. Still, that quality in her mother — to predictably side with the 215 �non-family person — had, at least for herself, been an ongoing source of pain. Her mind fell to a story she’d read — was it a brother of the Buddha, who (being jealous) decided to foil him? He’d set free a rampaging elephant. The elephant bounded off but when it saw the compassion on Buddha’s face, it stopped short and prostrated instead. A drawing of the scene had depicted just the elephant’s trunk groveling on the ground amongst a crowd of devotees. “Funny how much information is contained within that trunk,” she’d thought examining the drawing closely. Most of the followers carried offerings. Flowers, bowls, flowing robes, chortens — all joy-filled except the poor humiliated elephant. 216 �Horse pose Horse pose. “I mean I know I don’t have the strength to full on do the pose, so I feel like an imposter.” “Imposter!” “The pose requires power, grace, dignity. Instead of embodying it, deeply breathing into it, my mind falls apart. It says, ‘Spppooouush. Think about rivers. Think about flowers.’ ” Cool air clinging to the hill. “It wants to be hot,” she’d thought, gazing at the whimpering grass. “Go lower.” Her teacher’s voice, suddenly, apropos of nothing. “Everyone but Angie, go lower,” he had said. Everyone looked out of the corner of her eye at Angie, who indeed, was very low. Too low. “Angie, come up. There. Stay there.” “Strength in the legs builds prana,” her teacher said as the horse-pose clock ticked. “Notice your inhale. Power in the thighs deepens and purifies puraka, the incoming breath.” A shroud of dark. Ducks quacked. Seabirds whined. A low horn in the fog. 217 �“Was it plentiful?” “Her laptop was jewel-like the woman had said. Not plentiful in that sense.” She’d thought of the fat Korean comic upon whom instruction in being “Asian” had been foisted. The woman had felt so ashamed. A teenager wrote saying she was ashamed of her representing herself as Korean as if, being a comedian implied a stand-in role-model. It reminded her of the thin man. His mother had never recovered from the fact of him. She couldn’t stand that he was him. “That he ‘was’ took away from the possibility of her becoming?” “She couldn’t be her, schlepping around a kid.” Dark days. Their similar ending. The way they seemed to slow down, drift off. While light days rekindle themselves, dark days drop off flat. They keel over. Bamm. One can smell it coming. 218 �A flat sun broke through the wine-colored clouds. “Go lower,” he’d said. “Stay with your breath. Don’t let yourself get distracted.” His words came just as she had been about to lift her gaze. The air reeked forest. “Your perineum should broaden. Energetically, however, it lifts. If you allow your arches to activate your feet, and from there, your legs and abdominal muscles, your thighs won’t grip and the opposing actions in the muladara chakra will happen automatically.” It was a mouthful. “ROAD CLOSED” “Oh my god,” she’d thought. “There go my precious fifteen minutes.” She’d whipped the car into a U and inched back in the opposite direction, forcing herself to relax. She had had to snake down a one-lane thoroughfare for several miles to reach this sign. “Why couldn’t they have announced it at the turn-off,” she irrationally thought. While the route over the hill was popular, proportionately, very few people used it. “That’s the problem with insider secrets,” she’d rethought (it felt) more correctly. She was still scolding herself for having snapped-judged one of her classmates. 219 �Not a May sky Not a May sky. Behind the clouds a tortured sun. Bells, whisked by wind, aroused suddenly in a heat break. The city sighed. “What a relief!” For days now a brittle sun had poured down the air shafts. Midnight felt like noon. Sirens. Fires. Even the stars seemed out of whack. “Some people thrive in heat,” she’d reminded herself. She’d had a friend whose body — the closer to the equator, the more alive. Curled over his guitar his gentle swipe of the strings. Dark but not cold. The evening had jumped into place early. The silly ghost, splayed across her manager’s office window, had brought to her attention the fact that she was more isolated than she’d thought. “I was reading a book by a man who roams the astral world,” began the teacher in reference to herbs as inducers of elevated states of mind. “He said, Whenever I’m out [in the astral plane] I run into cats.” 220 �“Cats’ eyes have two lids,” he’d continued. “When both are shut it’s ‘see ya’ later.’ ” He’d obviously been a fond observer of his own two cats. “I’ve seen them twitch. It can get pretty weird.” She’d wondered why she’d never liked cats. Just thinking about them gave her the willies. One would guess that it’d be the opposite, since cats were calm, intuitive, highly evolved beings. “It’s their claws,” she’d reasoned, but secretly had no idea. It made no sense. Traffic snaked around construction. Stick figures raved. Baseball hats, polo shirts, knickers, bats — beside the wavelets. She’d looked, tired and wanting the sea-breeze in their shirts to be in hers that night. An old woman in a hat (or visor) came to mind. Mao jacket, farmer pants. (Her slow slow hobble.) She played flute with friends, she’d said, but alone she played viola. “Do you enjoy it?” she’d asked. (Because the woman had seemed stunted.) “Oh I don’t know,” she drawled. 221 �“Fat and sleek!” she’d muttered, rounding a bend, facing a huge moon in the still-dark dawn. “How do we adjust our practice?” a person asked. (Because it couldn’t be ignored.) The teacher had hedged. “The goal is to develop a sense of cool, yin, receptivity. For a beginner that might mean restorative poses.” He’d paused. “An advanced student might do difficult poses slowly. A vata must be still. Do you understand?” The finally-rising sun cast one lank ray across the spotless carpet. “Luxurious” was the word that had come to mind. The yogi’s body was not thin. Lithe and supple, powerful and soft. “A gorgeous body,” she’d thought as she watched her on her stool, one by one replacing the wooden blocks she’d removed the day before in an explosion of cleaning. She’d noticed that in class, each time a new instruction was given, she’d be in the pose before the words were out of the teacher’s mouth. Meanwhile she herself, like a lump, would be struggling with some logistic like buckling a strap or folding a blanket in threes, just so. 222 �The mule-ish quality was familiar. (At her monastery, as the first bell clanged, she’d watched a fellow student, fully robed, flying toward the meditation hall.) The idea would never have occurred to her. A chalky sky behind the elms. A cricket wheezed. The sun, a skin, sheathed the horizon. Birds twittered across the vale. Their echo. Hawks. “You’ll be a nicer person,” the teacher had said. “Remember that. You’ll be a nicer person.” He had invented a way of parsing mayurasana so that shorter portions were interspersed with another, easier, activity. “This way you do more,” he’d explained. Practice it for the week.” “Nicer person.” His words rang in her head. “It’s true. We all do want that!” she’d mused. Once a classmate had greeted her outside, in the dark, in the cold. “Hi Gail!” Later, much later, she’d said to herself, “I bet if I greet people pleasantly, calling them by name, it will make them feel good.” 223 �An elegant sun An elegant sun, its crispy back braced against the sky. “Yes,” she’d thought, “winter is around the corner.” Earlier, smelling dawn, sucking it (in rich full breaths), she’d almost lost her balance. “Empty your mind,” the teacher had said just as (so enticing was the fragrance — like hay or milk fresh from the udder) she was about to do it again. For one split second her life had flashed before her. “Little horse. Little secretions. Hope.” (The words popped through her dream.) “Raise your hands, bow your heads.” The teacher was preparing to end a vigorous class on backbends. “Inhale,” he’d said before a common instruction. The slow low sound, in and out. So old. So familiar. More familiar than her skin. “The moon will be full Saturday,” he had earlier announced. “Of course the moon’s light is really a reflection of the sun’s. That’s why we do rest poses . . . and long holds,” he’d added, almost as an afterthought. 224 �The glare from its mostly-full face had awakened her during the night. Sopping body. Moody mind. Simplest decisions impossible. An innocent day rising up up up. Peak after peak loomed in the distance frothing with clouds. “Paschimotanasana. Ten minutes. Take a blanket if you need to.” “There must be a marma point in the center of the forehead,” she’d thought as a surge of bliss rushed through her body. Stubby cypress. Dune flowers, bob tails. One sailboat slinking by the skyline. “Shaped mist,” she’d muttered as she watched the rocks and spiky treetops fringe the cobwebbed bridge. Two baby pines slumped beneath their mother naked on the east side. Salty air, slime and piles of mud near a crooked barrier. That morning her teacher had spread out a map of the body’s musculature. “When you support a person in a pose, your hand needs to be specific,” he’d begun. 225 �“The placement — the direction of your fingers — gives an energetic signal, which you use to encourage the person (even the person’s skin) to move in the right way. If your hands are on muscle, you may create pain. Tendons are better. See the white spots? You want to be there.” Later, his words “red meat, white meat” tumbled through her mind. “Bye Susan! Susan’s off to England.” The class had turned around to see Susan waving, leaving a little early. “Rain gear!” she’d exclaimed, inwardly describing the puffy black microfibre pants and oversized t-shirt Susan had on for her international flight. It made sense, but she wouldn’t have had the nerve. Odd that she would feel impelled to dress more formally on a flight whose majority of time would be spent sleeping. “Or writing. But clothes get in the way of writing.” 226 �Snow “Snow!” she’d thought as the snow-covered city emerged from its bank of bloody clouds. Indeed, the seven hills, the uptown highrises, even the bay resembled frosted glass. “Were it anywhere else it would be snow,” she’d said to herself. (She hadn’t realized that fog could be alabaster.) It had hailed earlier. After the rain. And sun for a split second. “What a day!” people were saying. When she’d driven toward the bay about 4:00 p.m., the light had been splendid. She’d looked up. Lo! Clouds like postcard heaven. Billowy, over-the-rainbow white. Black air (valley-bottom damp) peered in her window. “Like plaster,” she’d thought staring it down. Darkness was a fixture. Even the birds were tired of fighting it. A hummingbird that had formerly fed on her azaleas, tread the air that had held them. “In their memory,” she’d thought, amazed at their brains’ retention. She supposed it was a matter of survival, returning to 227 �previous nourishing sites. Yet their intelligence seemed somehow pitiful. “Think though. If they could talk themselves out of it. If they rationalized, ‘Hey! That old plant is not too likely to still be alive . . .” “So a bird learns by getting thrown into the fray and dealing.” “I’m not a bird.” “You learn by . . .” “Absorbing. Also by a line of sense. Like energy. Energy’s a language I speak fluently.” “An asana is a lecture. The hieroglyphics of a pose startle one’s cells to life.” “The way a posture genuflects — like a stiff sun stunned into exuberance.” Marjoram light. “So full of winter,” she’d thought. Traffic was flowing. “We’ll do a new moon practice today,” her teacher had said. “Deep, slow. If you injure yourself on a new moon day, it can take a long time to heal.” 228 �Pale hills steeped in the background, magenta clouds scurrying along their tips. “As if they’re peak-hopping,” she’d thought, remembering the practice of welljumping that Indian children relished. “Tweet tweet tweet.” Her eyes were closed and the sun, by now, was high in the sky. “Even their tweets are restrained,” she’d muttered. “Not their usual blares.” “So a full moon carries crazy energy. A new moon, energy not yet formed.” She was trying to visualize the difference. “Crazy = splattered all over the place. No roots. Wild. Not-yet-formed — it’s not flailing, as in untamed. It’s seeking, as in curious.” The more she thought about it, the more dissimilar they’d seemed. “How could I ever have confused them?” A melon sun splayed across her back, cradling her spine. It rolled in waves. On an inhale it practically spasmed. (Catching a glimpse of the spidery veins in her forearms and thighs.) “The ones in my arms are like a tree,” she’d thought. “Because they’re so thin, the blood vessels poke out.” 229 �And the ones in her thighs? Tiny blue lines squiggled in erratic directions. Up and down, out of control. The sun shone in unexpected corners, at unexpected times, in unexpected intensities. At the end of her practice it was chestnut. 230 �book five ��Plop . . . plop . . . plop. Plop . . . plop . . . plop. Slow drips from the rusted rail. A dowdy day. Between rains. (Waiting.) The window was cold. Splinters of air (like shards she’d thought) grazed her chest as she stood up close. A squirrel raced by, chewing on water. “There’s nothing else around,” she muttered to herself, pitying the animal. Dawn. Finally. (She had awakened early.) The voices of neighbors above. ❍ The shabby day, beneath her lids, slowly, slowly, sparkling. She’d wanted to open them, but had resisted. “I’ll just enjoy the glow,” she’d told herself, rationing the time. 233 �Though she couldn’t tell (and it’d been cloudy when she’d closed them) it felt (from the inside) that the day (reddening) fast-forwarded toward noon. High noon. Summer noon. Soft noon. Angling toward a peak. “The sun rises in your ears,” someone had suggested. “The moon in your nostrils.” (The woman who sweats when she breathes through the right one.) “Oh god, Harvey.” (The person who said that miles away.) ❍ Late morning light trailed her forward bend. (Its heat caressed her spine.) A buoyant fold, elbows hanging loosely. Scooting her right hand around her left wrist, gripping the wrist, allowing the shock of its skinniness to pass, she began to breathe. (The spasms of widening.) “I’m growing fat!” she’d thought, relishing the sense of spreading. Hadn’t she been harping on having more “room” in her old age. ❍ Tap tap tap. The thin man in his coat. 234 �“So now I have this rash. It’s not ‘vd’. But like here it is. What was I thinking?” His slouch made him look grumpy. “So it’s like, when I read, I hear books. Tones, sounds. It’s all conversation.” She too had trouble picturing things. “I lie in bed the whole day hear’n voices, feelings. But if they describe the setting — ‘The drug store on the corner near an old elm’ — like that — I lose interest.” “It shows in your skin.” ❍ “It’s trying,” she’d thought glancing at the sky. The murky white of the previous day was starting to have some pep. Her still-green hydrangeas reminded her of “brightly colored ones in harmony with the trees.” (Her book had spoken of them.) Hers used to be bright. Though their green was not anemic — its lime had verve — they melded neither with the trees nor the other seasonal blossoms. “They’re weird!” she’d thought (though she hated saying it). She couldn’t figure out what was wrong. 235 �In the front of her book’s house was a stand of peachcolored cosmos. A low green breeze blew from the mountains down toward the east, the author had said. “How can a breeze be green?” she’d mused. ❍ Fog shielded night. “From its own blackness,” she thought, scanning the tiny lights strung across the lot. A tent was already there. Beams crammed the sky, though, due to rain, the race had been called off. Branches, buckets, tags. A zillion tables fed the cold air. Jockeying trees. What feels sleazy? ❍ Puddles and spray, her dashboard a trough of mud. (The warmth of the under-air.) “She wanted them to accept her.” “Shuffling as a plea.” “They’re bored too. Hey.” ❍ A night of fiction. (How many centuries making it true?) 236 �“First (an adjustment) is ‘Hey. Whose life is it?’ ” “The letdown precedes the fact. Yes. It’s me.” “No spins.” ❍ “Hey! Could you get a mop?” He’d said it politely to the guy who’d spilled the water. “I hope you fall on your ass,” replied the guy. “What did he do?” “He went out to the shed, got a mop, mopped up the water. But he was furious.” “It raises uncomfortable feelings.” ❍ “It looks like it’s from a village,” the man said, examining the thangka. “See how it’s asymmetrical, lopsided, a little naïve. It’s very charming but not from a major center of art.” She knew what he meant. “It’s not realized. It lacks a full investment.” “It has a subject rather than being it.” 237 �❍ Dazzling sun stripping the water. How late is it? “Are the monks out yet?” “No.” “Who is that shivering near the stones?” “What makes you ask?” “Her light, its glimmer in the redwoods. (Its sheen down there blowing.) I thought I knew who it was. For a fleeting moment. Like a ghost or an aura of someone I’d known intimately.” ❍ Fog droned its blaring white hat. “The city wore mufflers. Turned its attention elsewhere.” “Whiteness before blackness. Nights darker. Days colder.” “Squandering. The pennies of motion. It’s her voice she says. It dips.” “Be nice to me, honey.” She says that in the dipping tone of winter. 238 �In an owl’s brain In an owl’s brain there is a region, the article had begun, whose specialized cells (using the coordinates of every sound) construct a map of auditory space. The barn owl’s is the most elaborate. Its screech presages death. If you hear its rasp . . . someone who knew him had . . . its shrill hiss had continued well out of earshot . . . Huge wings lowering into cottonwood. Funeral services were held for Kobun Chino and Maya Otogawa on July 30 in Engelberg, Switzerland, at the home of his senior dharma heir, Vanja Palmers. He is survived by his wife, Katrin, and their son and daughter, Alyosha and Tatsuko, as well as two adult children, Taido and Yoshiko. ❍ Black sky. Soft bands of pink had crept from behind the trees. She wondered if the sick man would be out for his gulps of air. But no. No one was out. “Maybe the fumes . . .” The paint’s toxicity had infiltrated her path also. Probably she was just irritated. Ever since she’d read Kobun Chino’s obituary. It had skirted Harriet! (She 239 �recalled the snappy energy between Harriet and old Mel, though he’d said they were just friends.) “A tryst at the baths — out pop five children! Two from Harriet. She wondered how, as a simple priest, he could support so many people. “Maybe it’s cheaper to live in Switzerland,” she’d mused, though she doubted it. ❍ “Elegant. You are always so elegant.” Her mother’s words came to mind. She had said this immediately after saying that she hadn’t liked the photograph she’d sent her for her birthday. “It’s so severe. You’re not that way, honey.” But she was. She was severe and elegant, a look her mother might appreciate, say, in Audrey Hepburn. “Everything was fine except you weren’t here.” ❍ Night plummeted. It fell so fast. “What happened to the day,” she’d muttered, looking out on its dregs. If she hadn’t been a geisha, she’d have been a Buddhist nun. Or policewoman said the character in her book. “From the inside . . . the word was extrospected . . .” which she’d guessed meant inspecting one’s inter- 240 �psychic world, closely, diligently, as one ordinarily would one’s intrapsychic one. The same energy gazing the other way. ❍ After-rain hush. As if the heavens, having spit out everything, had nothing more to say. “The hill does look a little sheepish,” she’d thought, staring at its sopping boughs. In her book there were crows and new green leaves on the garden’s maple. Unlike ballet, traditional Japanese dance focuses on the ground rather than the sky. Though slow, it requires highly-trained muscles. Each piece is composed of a number of fixed patterns (kata) that are later strung together. “I wonder if the kata of these dances and the kata that Tibetans use for offerings are the same?” “Tibetan kata = scarf (light, fluffy, airy),” her thoughts continued. “The recipient puts it around his neck . . . like a garland!” We went into the altar room to say our morning prayers. Afterwards, she tucked up my long sleeves with a cord so I could work and stuck the feather 241 �duster in the back of my obi. Then she took me to the lavatory and taught me the proper way to clean a toilet. “That’s how a monk is trained! she gasped. “Precisely. And in the same order!” ❍ “That’s my seat,” screamed the child at the older girl (who was accustomed to this spot). “Yes, child, that’s right. Take your seat.” (But she’d wondered how . . . she was so small . . . ) Older girl pouts (eats without saying grace). “It’s rude to eat before the Madame. You have terrible manners,” mocked the babe. Madame to the older girl: “Listen to what she says. She has a lot to teach you.” She’d thought of the Avatar Yogananda scolding, instructing, stridently correcting his elementaryschool classmates. The rapacious conviction of the Mother (Madame) who “recognized” the toddler (allowed her her blanket of turquoise with white tulips). ❍ She fell into a doze. There was another character with whom she’d identified. 242 �The reason for Ogata-san’s unusually long stay that summer had become clear the moment Shigeo Matsuda, looking thinner and more youthful than she had remembered him, slid open the entrance gate to his pleasant-looking house and squinted to avoid the glare of the noonday sun. Dressed in his shirtsleeves, he’d carried a small briefcase which he opened momentarily, rebuckled it and crossed over to her side of the road. Shigata-san, she now realized, had waited a long time to finally bring the matter to a head. She remembered how casually he’d first brought the subject up. His circuitous approach (requiring a tremendous amount of forethought) should have indicated that the situation, demeaning to his sense of honor, was one he had hoped Jiro would handle. Obliquely inquiring about Jiro’s school reunion (which understandably he’d figured Shigeo Matsuda might attend) and leading from that to some offhand mention of Shigeo Matsuda himself — whether Jiro ever runs into him — do they still get together from time to time — to his belittling observation about the confidence of today’s young people, “Like myself I suppose at that age, they are exceedingly sure of their opinions,” he’d eventually gotten around to the article in the teacher’s periodical he’d run across. “I’d never heard of it” he’d added, referring to the periodical. “It wasn’t in existence in my time. To read it you’d think all the 243 �teachers in Japan are Communists.” Gauging the entrenchment of Jiro’s passivity from his flaccid agreement, “Yes Communism does seem to be on the rise,” Ogata-san had at length stated what had been on his mind from the start, namely, Shigeo Matsuda’s scathing attack of him, Ogata-san, in this article. Perhaps as a way of deflating his anger at Jiro’s evasive, “Are you sure it’s the same Shigeo Matsuda?” Ogatasan, whose face had suddenly taken on a nostalgic cast, recalled how the Matsuda boy used to come to their home to play and how terribly Jiro’s mother would spoil him. Then he’d remarked that he himself had introduced Shigeo Matsuda to the headmaster of Kuriyama High School (implying a further dimension to his shame in light of a personal obligation). To all this Jiro had only to answer, “It’s very regrettable, Father. You must excuse me or I’ll be late.” She believed it had been the next morning that Ogatasan emerged from his room dressed in jacket and tie and announced his plan to visit Dr. Endo, the other teacher attacked in the Matsuda article. She remembered the morning well. He had complimented her on her cooking with a warning that he might ask her to teach him both to cook and to play the violin, from which fantasies she’d understood his profound engagement with teaching — that it had been his way of life, 244 �certainly his primary way of relating to other people — and just why his integrity being questioned by an “upstart” like Matsuda was so humiliating and ultimately intolerable. Then, he’d directly asked if she knew Shigeo Matsuda and about her assessment of the closeness these days of his friendship with Jiro. To her answers, which couldn’t have been helpful (she’d only met Shigeo a few times and Jiro and he were not close) Ogata-san replied, (did I imagine the twinge of disappointment that these words hadn’t originated with Jiro?) “I’m going to suggest to Jiro that he write to his friend. Shigeo should apologize. Or else I’ll have to insist Jiro disassociate himself from that young man.” About this time Ogata-san and Jiro had begun a game of chess that lasted the entire duration of Ogata-san’s visit. In fact, on looking back, there was no doubt in her mind that Ogata-san’s decision to take matters into his own hands (and from there, his business being finished, to end his visit with them) had been determined by the outcome of this very game. Ogata-san apparently had been sedulous in his efforts to teach his son to play chess. In particular he had used chess as a way of instilling in young Jiro highly valued traits and of correcting certain unwelcomed ones that he’d noticed early on in his son’s character. A significant part of the lesson pertained to approach — 245 �e.g., everything hinges on a coherent method — when the enemy crushes one scheme, a good chess player immediately comes up with another — a game is sealed not when a king is cornered but when a player gives up having an overall plan — one should never play a single move at a time; one should think ahead, three moves at the very least — and so forth. Ogata-san had said he could tell that although Jiro began his game with a strategy, the moment he, Ogata-san, broke it down, Jiro gave up and began playing one move at a time. When Jiro replied, “There seems little point in carrying on then,” Ogata-san had accused him of defeatism, whereupon Jiro, exasperated, had said that he failed (which ultimately of course implicated Ogata-san as having failed as an instructor) to see what defeatism has to do with it. “It’s only a game.” Ogata-san’s subsequent behavior — so typical — he was a teacher through and through, though she realized in retrospect that he was as slow a learner (they had been playing for several months) when it came to the nature of his son’s personality as his son was in matters most prized by Ogata-san. He’d explained to Jiro that although he had him cornered, there were three separate means by which he, Jiro, could escape, one of them being very simple. By sulking and saying he wanted to quit, Jiro was behaving the same way he’d behaved when he was nine. Ogata-san, agreeing to end the 246 �game, but wanting anyway to show Jiro his three potential moves, pushed Jiro to the point of explosion. Flinging down his newspaper Jiro had gotten up as if to knock the chess-board to the floor, but had clumsily stumbled on a teapot steeping next to him, spilling its contents onto the tatami. When it registered that all he had accomplished was to make a mess, he’d snatched his newspaper and left the room without a word. It was the very next morning that Ogata-san started talking about “getting back.” Just as he had given Jiro every opportunity to win the chess game, he had likewise given Jiro every opportunity to address Shigeo Matsuda. What Ogata-san had really learned from Jiro’s behavior the previous night (which was probably why he’d appeared so thoughtful, sitting so long gazing at Jiro’s puddle) was that Jiro’s standard answer — “I know it’s important Father and I’ll do it as soon as I have time” — was his son’s own strategy of avoidance. He, Ogata-san, needed to acknowledge that this was Jiro’s game-plan. Jiro’s refusal to see (and to act upon the fact) that, given his father’s history and pride, there was no way a slur on his honor could be anything other than unbearable (requiring prompt and firm attention from his adult son) was a retaliation in itself. Clearly during the night Ogata-san had accepted this. Therefore his decision to take the matter into his own hands. 247 �Drip. Drip. Drip. Raspy drops on the innards of a squirrel, tire-marks faded. Trees like green clowns through the gush west. Swirling lights, red, white. Puffs of white thrust through rain pounding on the asphalt. Her (white) dream. Turrets and gray slats. A gymnasium of quiet people stroking their dog or lovinglywrapped cat. Song after song, gently (kneeling) petting their dozing beast. “Strange. They all know all the songs,” she’d thought observing through the door, each person lost in a deepening connection with her animal. The latter swooned. “As much as a dog can swoon,” she muttered, glued to the scene. (She’d stood there a long while.) 248 �Manga 2 Solutions 3 (1) Bird drools over a map of Africa displayed in the showcase of a museum giftshop. The map is a page in a luxuriant leather-bound atlas equal in value, Bird has calculated, to five months of teaching cram-school. Something at once virulent and doleful about the mapmaker’s depiction of the exotic continent stirs him in a way that the platitudes of his daily life in post-war Tokyo have not. The vision (Bird on African soil gazing at cerulean sky through dark-colored glasses or Bird stranded on Nigerian plateau facing certain death by enraged beast or Bird with tribes statuesque, scintillating in ivory and paint — NON-STOP JINGLY MOTION) has eaten into his composure so that it is startling to be addressed (by his mother-in-law for example) as someone who isn’t this person. Simultaneously Bird purchases Michelin road maps series #182 and #185 complete with insignia (toadlike rubber man rolling tire down road), a practical gesture for actual use in Africa, while his wife sweats on a rubber mat giving birth to their son (the common theme being 2. Manga meaning “cartoon” is often written in hiragana syllabic script. When written in Chinese script, manga is a compound of two characters: man meaning “involuntary, in spite of oneself ” or “morally corrupt” and ga meaning “picture.” 3. Inspired by the novel A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oë. 249 �bringing forth life). For Bird’s son equals Africa (or surpasses Africa) only Bird as yet doesn’t realize it. What he does realize is that the spunky existence of this baby (saturated with hidden codes) is a knife to the cord of his, Bird’s, youth. Skirting the edge of his ability, his anonymity, his reverse prowess, Bird is about to become known. He is aging. Not like his paunchy friends whom the corporate world and marriage fatten, but more sinister and thorough, his aging sears his striving adolescent frame so that it languishes inside itself. He has shrunk opaquely. One looking closely sees the same birdlike posture, hunched, spritely, superimposed on a floating corpse. Bit by bit his second body yellows and dries. When his son is born with “two heads” (a brain hernia causes the brain to protrude from a fault in the skull so that the head seems to be double), one can imagine Bird’s terror for it is somewhat like catching an unexpected glimpse of himself in a carnival mirror. (2) Bird sees himself reflected in the plight of the unwieldy infant — created by his mind and his body. The doctor said “goods” (“Would you like to see the goods?”) and he is entirely correct. This is Bird’s product. 250 �In a desperate move to save his neck (being saddled for the rest of his life with a monster baby is a form of strangulation) Bird tells the hospital not to operate. He will take the baby home. This is neither a plan nor a strategy. It is loss of impulse control (the illusion of freedom from responsibility and hence from the burden of being an individual). In actuality Bird has thought no further than to get away from the doctor in the face of whose authority he feels powerless. As in taking one’s pet to the SPCA, or one’s senile mother to a “convalescent home,” Bird’s panic is a signal that it has registered, at least partially — the baby is now entirely his concern. Sloughing off his obligation, slipping the creature to a “doctor” who would make sure it died of malnourishment or pneumonia or some trumped-up diagnosis that could survive an autopsy, is choosing to play a part, irrevocably. And mistaking the nature of his fetters as existing outside himself. Bird’s panic ironically is a sign of health — the first tiny indicator of the possibility for his survival that manages to poke its ugly head above the physical, emotional and psychological abuse with which he is accustomed to treat himself. 251 �Somehow through the haze of alcohol, furin,4 pride, denial, dissociation, irresponsibility and general immaturity (viz. clinging to his silly adolescent nickname and accompanying fantasies) a spark of conscience obtrudes itself just enough to make it known to Bird that he is now, precisely, at a point of no return. A comment on will power by virtue of which certainly Bird’s baby is Bird’s baby. Before he turned twenty Bird, we are told, knew no fear. Seven years and four months later he teeters on making a decision the consequences of which could make him fear’s lifelong devotee. Bird catches a glimpse of his future self in the reflection of his “idiot son” in the nick of time. As long as the welfare of his baby is in official hands (experts at a university hospital), the tenacity by which the situation grabs Bird creates its own kind of exclusivity. (The life of his conscience hangs by the thread of an infant’s cap or pacifier.) So securely is Bird held by his own anguished retro image that (as if mystically blessed) he is excused from (when taken at face value) “larger” civil (national and international) concerns. Shackled though he is by bassinet etc., excruciatingly and mercilessly, by the same token he is, in ordinary 4. An illicit sexual relationship in which one or both partners are married to someone else. 252 �spheres, more at liberty than usual, enjoying a margin of action circumspectly broader than the conventions and lies that heretofore ruled his life. Ultimately he may be out of control (prisoner of himself), but so out of sync is he with the world’s destiny (the little drummer boy who offers his most prized possession to the baby Jesus) that its manacles no longer constrain him. The pulse of his baby replaces the pulse of humanity. As long as it beats inside Bird, he is free. ❍ Pink sky, treetips — hi! good morning! But the God of Black said “No-o-o-o.” (The sun’s wan grin barely discernible through the blur.) “Sit in padmasana. Cross your right leg under your left. Soften your eyes and be sure the channel through your right nostril is clear.” (The tick of the clock as dots of rain beat rhythmically against the door.) She’d relished the space. Each person making her own inner adjustment. As if on call, her right nostril felt frisky. ❍ Earlier she’d been aware of her proclivity to not move (more, being-as-a-swoon). 253 �The pull of inertia compounded by gravity, its weight, tug, unyielding bearing — down. Like the slow unfurling of water — steady, forceful, even-keeled. “I find my ears yearning (searching) for the gentle patter that usually comes first.” ❍ Her eyes drifted to her flowers. “A bulbous lily-like plant native to South Africa,” began the mushroomshaped tag. “Its bold (flamboyant) blossoms range from red, salmon, snow white to pink.” A new bud had pricked through a bluish sheath (both phallic). Bushy grass and bits of bark — a hairy pubic undergrowth. “A row of them would make a perfect Hanukah menorah,” she’d thought, though a silver Star of Bethlehem shimmered beneath its flares. One infant peeped candle-like skyward. Its would-be flame had a lime-green center. She was reminded of Albert Schweitzer, the photo at his hospital desk. Tall locks, bushy brows, mangy goatee, bow tie. Twinkly eyes and fur had draped over his resting hand. 254 �“It’s in the lion pose,” she’d smiled. “Almost — with a little more oomph and slightly higher hand.” Somehow, now, on the cusp of a wild storm, the thought of that tropical climate. ❍ She’d tucked her t-shirt under her bra and lowered her tights so that her students could see her navel. “It’s risky for me to demonstrate this banda. I’m fifty and I’ve had four children.” It was the day after Christmas. About to pour. Three people were in class. She listened to the wind rising with the sun. Ribbons of sateen, cobalt then iris then nero nero nero. “A Neanderthal winter,” she’d thought, watching the woman. 255 �Behind the windless darkening day Splish splash. “I can’t even see the bay,” she’d thought, shading her eyes from the stark shards of silver. She’d moved to the exit lane. “Ouch! I could have hit that person!” Cars banked. Flowers crushed. “What a day,” everyone was saying. ❍ Rain hissed over a sheer sheet of water. (Sprawling dew inflating itself like a peacock.) Yet the streets were quiet. A few drops meandered down her sideview mirror. (The gush of motion blasting its aftermath in the face of the bleary ones.) A dog pranced along the walk. Proud as a bird. Its sleek hair. ❍ Mud in the alley. Blinding white sky. Cold air seeped through a small crack in her window. She’d remembered leggings. Funny light in the slanting (pale) evening. Walking slowly sucking on a stick. 256 �Or chewing a whole pack evenly. One a block. How many gummy candies? Hard chewy. Soft chewy. It’s true, her acupuncturist had said. Some foods are especially suited to some people. ❍ “So I walk around the lake maybe twice everyday. I figure in ten years I’ve walked the lake 4000 times.” His black nylon jacket was zipped to his chin. “What is it like before dawn?” “The air smells sweet. I can breathe really deeply.” “Are you scared?” “Naaa. There’s one part where drug dealers work. I just say hi. They’re pretty friendly.” “Around 2:00 I go again. The light is beautiful. Like the day peaks. In summer, of course, it’s too hot.” ❍ “Shouldn’t they be flying south? March (not December) is when they’re all over the place!” She was brushing a caterpillar from her porch’s ledge. The skinny creature, pretzeled into an “s,” had stared, whittled its feelers and slowly proceeded along the blue railing. 257 �She’d noticed another, then another. (Butterflies had been scarce for years.) She had been concerned about their absence, but seeing caterpillars about to pupate . . . in the rain, in the fog . . . Soft gray sun had spread across the greenery. Late afternoon light. “Almost the new moon,” she’d thought, as if straining would scurry it along. A nearby church. ❍ A motley day. “Even the squirrels look cold,” she’d thought gazing at a severed-but-clinging branch. Their unpretentious sopping. “The lungs of the girl. The idea that her lungs could be cordoned off. Painted jet blue.” “Jet blue?” “Isolated from the rest of her. As if she could treat them one way and meanwhile think of her dogs as valuable.” 258 �Kan5 You know for sure they were a Stranger’s words because of your clear memory of the circumstances. Yet, you feel convinced that those same words had gushed forth straight from the deepest recesses of your soul. Assuming that words come to life only in the relationship of two human beings, there’s no earthly reason why you should not insist that your own existence be the wellspring of the Stranger’s words. Him-me, me-him — the narrator seems to be posing a rhetorical question. ‘Nothing quite as terrifying, soulstirring, as being picked as a pinch runner!’ either he or the other father remarks as they, awaiting their retarded sons, watch children different from ours on the ball field. ‘That’s it, even when nobody bothers to shout and cheer him on with Go Go,’ the alternate slides right in. Postwar sandlot baseball, those golden years when who’s who was delegated to black-market mitts (‘nine mitts in our settlement’), scored their (yes, unilateral) hearts which plummeted to their stomachs in the rush of Go Go Go. Almost a pant (frenzied), almost a whisper, potbelly of preconsciousness, informing strains, isolate, divergent patches, (wiggly, primitive) shadows of shared pre-knowing. (About their retarded sons?) 5. Kan means “gap” such as the gap between two sliding screens. Through this thin space ninja, masters of stealth and disguise, glide in. 259 �So how do we sort out the him-me-me-him nerve? It (the energy vibration) enters the body through the medulla (oblongata). One can easily syphon it off, messenger it to a body part, invigorate that part. Is me-him-him-me like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry? We recognize ourselves as chocolate, the fervent slip of the forefinger deep inside the cookie-dough and then YUM. It is forever. ‘Dead Monkey.’ Like tough love is it? They say that during withdrawal, the drug addict hallucinates one (a dead monkey) glued to the scruff of his neck. Which must be terrifying. The disgusting pull, chain-gang hulk fastened, fastening, fastener of my soul, my astral body. And here we are. No cigarettes. No leeway, junkie. You see how quickly things get confused? ❍ Cracking the fog. Its handsome caw. A crow or a jay through the mist. “Who was it that said he’d found a blank canvas so stunning that immediately to work on it — for him, it demanded too much too quickly? (So first he got it dirty. Then he’d work in reverse.)” “It wasn’t linear.” “Painting is never linear,” he’d claimed. “Except when 260 �one’s asleep (and maybe even in one’s dreams), one is constantly reflecting, contemplating, shifting, having flashes of clarity.” “What’s there must give forth and there is no criterion except, ‘yes, that is really what gave forth’ and not an idea of what, for example, ought to have been given forth.” ❍ Creampuff clouds, a bed of them, beneath the raw blue sky. “I’m here!” screamed the sun. “The ghost of rain, storming away. MAD.” “Clouds got their way.” “Does that mean, being pushy, that they deactivated the horizon? I mean that horizon had been waiting a long time.” “The horizon was orange both before and after, right?” ❍ She’d thought of the girl who wanted her freedom but loved her dog who needed constant walking. “The idea of a dog does not contain its volume within the dog’s actual contour, whereas the actual dog somehow does.” 261 �“Worrying about the dog — the persistence of noetic pulse — its volume contains her actual contour.” ❍ Blip blip — blip blip. Rhythmic, metallic. (Her memory of the man who’d put tin in his painting.) “The tin was so lively I had trouble getting it onto the surface,” he’d said. It had looked light, almost like it could blow away, whereas its history — it was filled with sand and had been rescued with an enormous crowbar. (What it furnished as a shape, color, or volume.) “For me, what’s interesting, is the attitude of the picture as its evolving,” he had said. (“His idea of putting more into a painting than it could hold simply by folding a larger piece of canvas into a smaller one.”) “A title is extra color,” he’d said. ❍ The mute. The pleaded man. He was spent. “Well, it’s costly. Neutral is expensive.” “ ‘Am I alive or dead?’ It’s a samurai chant he intoned each morning at 4:00.” 262 �“How does one know?” “If you get MAD.” “But you are a dead person.” ❍ Blasting drops. Unrelenting water. Streets like lakes (soon-to-be rivers). “I just want warm clothing. I go to my closet with the intention of dressing warm and out comes — what — the flimsiest garment!” ❍ “You’d have to be a fool to want to paint a picture,” said the painter. “The most powerful instinct is to paint a single form in its continuity.” (Which he admitted was a face.) “The true image only comes out when it exists on an imaginary plane,” he’d said. “Rembrandt eliminated plane. Van Dyck said, ‘I’m a painting,’ whereas Rembrandt — he’d said ‘I am not a painting, I am a real man.’ (But he was not a real man either.)” “Cage used noise. He’d begin with a city — ‘a structure in which you could do anything’ — and continued with what he called ‘far-reaching’ actions in such a way that 263 �the activity within the structure — well, it just dissolved.” “By not having something happen, the thing was carrying on. No-sound didn’t stop the flow.” “It wasn’t a pause. People mistake this.” ❍ “I want the things that happen to not erase the spirit that was already there without anything happening.” (Cage drove the point home.) While in Variations 4 he’d refused to chat with members of the audience during the performance (“Don’t you see I’m busy?”), in Variations 6, chatting simply became part of the show. ❍ Con la ayuda del Semáforo Solar: ¡ ¡ ¡ HAGAMOS DEL SOL NUESTRO AMIGO ! ! ! Ministerio de Salud In an Upside-Down World, Sunshine is Shunned ran the headline to an article on Punta Arenas, Chile. In the southernmost city on the planet, “solar stoplights” set at four levels of alert, warn people to limit their peakof-the-day exposure to a maximum of 21 minutes. 264 �“When the light is red, I don’t let my kids go out to play at all,” one mother had said. A picture above the article showed a woman wearing a sheepskin vest over a long-sleeved sweater. Thick, dark glasses wrapped around her head. In a second photo, a blonde little girl dressed in black velvet demonstrated to her schoolmates how to protect themselves. At first glance the child looked like she was in a play. “We feel like we are rabbits in a laboratory experiment,” said one dad. “Nobody knows what is going to happen to us.” Absurd indoor beaches by a Japanese painter — elaborate palms, coconuts, silver sand, white-tipped wavelets — flocked to mind. ❍ Earlier she’d smeared the emergent mist, slowly, hesitantly, praying that rain, feeling staved off, wouldn’t obdurately fill the vacuum. It had. It had begun to rain. Then it rained, vigorously, for about three minutes. Then it stopped, and hadn’t resumed, despite the reports, despite the fact that any fool . . . 265 �The squirrel, in the rain, resting on its haunches (bobbing, arching, heaving, twitching). She’d always thought of a squirrel as sprightly whereas this one — each movement seemed to ream through its entire body. “That’s funny,” she’d thought, maneuvering closer to the window. In her dream she’d had on a tightly-fitting kimono. Waddling across a street, she was making her way to a hairdresser whose expensive permanent — she’d wanted it but hadn’t counted on the price. ❍ “A well-educated foot,” the teacher had said, caricaturing an armless person steering an automobile with his legs . . . and feet. “The body will learn anything.” Before she slept she’d been studying the lessons of a yogi who had been murdered. His body was never found said his father in a postscript. This flossing of the body — her sloth kicked in. Plus a part of her (a feisty, strong, non-slothful part.) ❍ Sobbing storm. Awake in the thrashing swish, whoosh, whoop! Water — from the sky, road, trees — splashes, gushes, the world an explosion of harsh pellets. 266 �The sober morning-after. Drip drip drip. A slow dark day. (The feeling that darkness would never end.) Strange. In summer she’d looked forward to rain. And now, she still did enjoy the rain. Sable clouds. Sable hill. Flashing lights peeled the haze. ❍ The old man alone, startled. He wanted her there, yet her words, she felt, were an interruption. He would never have admitted it. “Silence continues the thing. It’s not a lapse. It’s the same as if there had been something.” He (the man) would probably agree, but only in theory. He wouldn’t agree, really. “Without resistance you vanish either into meaning or clarity and who wants to vanish into either meaning or clarity?” 267 �A gnarly El Niño Ono (scriptwriter-to-be) and I are staring up at the pitch-black sky when suddenly the tarry clouds above us part and I see their searing thunderheads catch the glitter of the moonlight. (This is an Oë sentence.) “Oh God,” Ono says. “You know the Righteous Man has been killed don’t you?” (When it departs from the nightingale’s body the nightingale’s knowledge that the night has passed is destroyed.) Sayoko, perched on the seat next to her, ( Karima kunoichi are women who, not part of the clan, are hired as maids, mistresses, fortunetellers, prostitutes) voices exception to Ono’s blatant (PINK) grief (too much feeling, not enough cause). SHUT UP YOU LITTLE BITCH! SHUT YOUR TRAP!” Ono responds in the doldrums of sorrow. Still missing the point Sayoko retaliates, “Change your attitude or I’ll denounce you” — a naïve and (unconsciously fascist) stance typical of a very young person — though not a pea-brain. Nor is she (Sayoko) forthright about her personal desires — to be in the back seat holding the wounded Mori. (Her young activist eye attacks, in this case inappropriately, and labels self-serving motives.) “SHUT UP, BRAT! CAN’T YOU KEEP YOUR TRAP SHUT!” Ono, polish personified, is too maimed to manage juvenile energy just at the moment. The little tart, reckoning her losses, scrunches back in her seat, still 268 �cursing but inaudibly. Ono launches into her story — the death of the Righteous Man — but the little tramp can’t restrain herself. “SHUT UP! YOU LITTLE BITCH, STILL FLAPPING YOUR JAWS!” The Mediator nabs the ensuing interlude to assign Sayoko the TASK of being Mori’s caretaker whereupon her secret desire transforms into a politically correct action which (because of her previous rigidity) she may lose face performing now. First she wants to but she doesn’t dare. Then she HAS to but she doesn’t dare (1) to refuse on the grounds of her causes or (2) to agree on the grounds of her feelings. The fact that she has cause and feeling positioned adversarially MARKS her as a featherweight. RULE NUMBER ONE for a skillful woman (ninja) is to have cause and feeling in sync. ❍ A gnarly El Niño season has announced its arrival with a big wet slap across northern California. Brandishing a bright swath of red and white (a clear El Niño hallmark) the latest color-coded maps signal warmer-than-normal sea temperatures and higherthan-normal water levels. The article had gone on to explain that aberrant conditions spanned an area twice the size of the United States, stretching across the Pacific from the international dateline to the coast of South America. 269 �According to one meteorologist, a separate slug of warmish water (bearing its own distinct blob on the satellite maps) had popped up in the northern Pacific. This had fostered a westward drift in a ridge of high pressure above the Gulf of Alaska, allowing storms to sneak down through the Aleutians into southern British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Though forecasters had been careful not to call a storm an El Niño storm (even a storm in an El Niño winter), it was certain that El Niño (with its addled air masses pulling the mid-latitude tempest track southward) was energizing and pumping extra moisture into a tail of turbulence heading her way. “And what about the fish!” she’d exclaimed, worried, saddened, disgusted with the newsmen. ❍ Drip drop drip. Persistent blasts. And she, in the dark, listening. (The agony, like Christ’s, repeated to a voiceless child.) Slower, a little slower. But when she woke, it was pouring. (Only the hiss of wind.) “Jets of water sound like wind,” she’d muttered, listening more closely. It was curious. The harder it 270 �poured . . . there seemed to be a threshold, which, once crossed, either clarified or made it more murky. On her stomach, on her pillow, cool, puffy, relaxed. ❍ Rain. Then blackness. Dawn, finally, a limp beam. “Poor hill,” she mused, staring at the silent mud. Wind felled trees. “Millions lost their lights!” one headline shrieked. She’d prepared (set out candles, flashlights, water) but it hadn’t happened. “Didn’t they bury them after the last gale?” (A resident was referring to the power lines.) Having continuously lost their electricity — “We’ll remove them from the elements” — the city’s authorities had effectively said before planting them underground. She shut her eyes. The sound of the hill, stark and weary. ❍ “Am enjoying your book of poetry so much, honey — read it everyday for a little while — lovely, lovely!” It was on a card with a snowman (Santa Claus hat) holding a bunch of heart-shaped balloons. Two of the red ones showed up as the “a’s” in “Happy Holidays!” when you spread it open, typical of her mother’s exuberance. 271 �Over the years they’d both persisted in sending the style that represented themselves, rather than what the other person might appreciate. Blinding sun. But when she’d looked up — expecting (finally) clear sky — “The sky’s tongue is coated,” she’d thought, dizzy with the shock. “You’d think with all the rain . . . The sky seems to have indigestion.” Her hydrangeas too had suffered. The storm had taken several stalks. While new growth was just beginning to be visible, the plant as a whole looked exhausted. She worried that she hadn’t fed it enough. Or the right food. Yet now that she was apprised, it was winter. Probably she should wait until spring. She wished she knew more about plants, but her mind discarded whatever she was given even as the person painstakingly . . . ❍ A giant sea turtle ambled out of the chilly waters of Tomales Bay to the amazement of several witnesses and sunned itself on a beach near Inverness, thousands of miles from its normal habitat in Mexico and Costa Rica. The adult turtle, weighing an estimated 75 pounds, emerged from the water directly in front of one of the Bay Area’s few sea turtle biologists, who happened to be at Shell Beach that day with his family. 272 �The biologist had snapped about 25 pictures before the turtle shuffled back into the water and swam off as if nothing was out of the ordinary. One of the photographs (with just the turtle’s snout sunning in soft swirls of seawater) accompanied the article, which went on to say that the olive ridley, being way out of its element, had perhaps been a victim of El Niño. Previously barracuda and other tropical fish had been found in northern California waters during El Niño winters. The whole thing was all the more bizarre in that even leatherbacks (who have occasionally been sighted in Monterey and around the Farallones) rarely come out of the water unless they are nesting the reporter had said. “Cold water would slow a turtle’s heart, which would allow it to survive while drifting with the current,” one expert fathomed. Another: “The animal may just be confused.” Her gaze fell to the hill where two birds frolicked. Twirling, swirling, dashing from place to place. “They have so much energy!” she’d swooned. The turtle had reminded her — how had the painter put it — “There are forms in some experiences in your life that hold excitement. Even if you can’t do them very 273 �well, there is something terrific about the tenacity of a form that won’t allow you to do it.” ❍ Her new bud’s tongue was sticking way out. “It could be a baby bird,” she’d thought enraptured with its intense (upright) caw (“food mama, please more food”). One of the four older blossoms had shriveled. Its red was gray-red; its edges were white. Droopy frail pistils randomly suspended. Just there, disappearing. The bud was growing. “It’s slightly redder than the adults,” she’d muttered, mesmerized by its velvety glow. Their horn-like shapes reminded her of “taps.” 274 ���redwind daylong daylong was designed and set into type by Linda Davis at Star Type, Berkeley, using ITC Bodoni Twelve. This typeface was originally designed by Giambattista Bodoni, in Parma, Italy in the early 19th century and redrawn for modern use by Sumner Stone, Holly Goldsmith, and Jim Parkinson. The type was digitized by the ITC type foundry. ������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Redwind daylong daylong Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2004 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 972611525 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_049 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 288 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/1f70ef6da4b26f249ff4ce651749e8c1.pdf 5441e2903e3e6b14724aabc43bbf4bcb PDF Text Text RAGA �ALSO BY GAIL SHER Prose The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984 Poetry Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �RAGA Gail Sher Q NIGHT CRANE PRESS 2004 �Copyright 2004, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press, 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN: 0-9726115-4-1 �For Brendan ��CEREBELLUM OF THE TALL GIRL ��Cooing portamentos (patent) as a grasshopper is. Where palaces were ochre, ecru (flocked velvet). What’s that prana? He’d bailed. He couldn’t remember. �3� �The Dervish (his howl tidy). He hears and hears and hears to the crusty depths of sand. Mama of the pale ship. Chew the fire. Call the boys. �4� �But will they? The fellow played her sad. Buckling of her seldom-in-touch-with. Sad robin (crumpled with crêpe-paper). �5� �Upanayanam. Once rice (of above) me. Languorous and huge. Crepuscular light steadily and unbiased. �6� �O Jammu by the ocean. Player sri (he was a dear). “Yes’m” said sparsely. Take Sufi. Froth (dribbling) down the swan. �7� �Punjabi bells. Awakening to alms handed through the trees. She was twelve. Sparrows of Lot. Bull-red and singing matter. �8� �Ring-a-ling-a-ling. Cow soft. Plethora of joy and milk. “Have a talk, my friend.” But her tone was rude. People felt her heaviness. �9� �Gas and bees. The steppes of Providence (dreams). Her suckle whence the body attire. Thrown and thrown passed. � 10 � �The ants heard (siphoned off the jetty). Musk seller’d cut sheer to the text. We embraced darts (the cherry-colored stall). “Gathering together we offer thanks.” (But it sounded off.) � 11 � �Distal bucket. In the sanctuary of his music, I play lace. A Catholic person objects. Lettering his dollar. To me to her (breath). � 12 � �Snake of tide. Pasted god to his forehead and can’t see. They say the chassis . . . well, animists say. Mustachioed (and sulk) the stonemason red. � 13 � �Yes. It’s them. Clay bangs. Tantalized the sung. Though her legs were short, she didn’t cry. � 14 � �Yeh grass. Poke through the fence whose birdy almost died. I thought it was a leaf (at first) blow’n in a gust. Flick. Flick. “That’s a bird!” I’d said. � 15 � �Man of Khan. Bolt. Probity striking (say) the apple tree in the backyard. No force. She’d shuttered, flew away. � 16 � �Hush Solomon (the kin await). Slim minarets singing themselves (huskily). An old source, now uprooted, now baking bread. The spud speaks of a similar offering. � 17 � �Hot spell. A Parsee maid amongst the screwpines miffed. Telemachus will die. (As he’d said.) “Anyway . . . ” he’d repeated himself. � 18 � �“Für Elise,” her rag-doll cried. She’d sat on a tuffet waiting to be fed. Om Mani, Om Padme, Om Shanti, Om. Diwali lantern (hot red). � 19 � ��PAKAD Pakad: Set of notes (turns of phrase) by which a raga’s principle characteristics can be recognized. ��I hear the rock. Hummmmmmmmmm. (The embrace of color.) A bull (humped) ripping at my chest. Now I am a tiger as it was bequeathed. � 23 � �Cotton gauze. Yes! The pads of my toes soft, premature. A dress hugs my knees, giving weight. Planting me. Hey Ram (Guru-shishya parampara). � 24 � �Pluck. Pluck. Pluck. Fretless neck. Wooden knobs thud. Trajectory of me (the king, the sage’s student). His chasuble from shell. � 25 � �The bowl of my sarod. A hollow vessel. Gushing dizzily of infinity. What’s me, I say. I stay steady. Or tabloid of Him (its shaft of hen sound). Sing a hymn of glory, fox. � 26 � �Prince throat. Young hair parted in the center. Father please (before the striped-cotton curtain). I want to dawdle amongst the piebald man. � 27 � �Tongue, a jest. One frog mouth, from Kansas, so to speak. HE let me borrow him. (It’s hard to guess the motivation.) My compass of big bags. � 28 � �Socks. Jesus wore them. Yes, when he got cold. I seen him put them on. Son (the boy heard). Listen with ferocity. The dogma of gear. Don’t let it get you down. � 29 � �“Oh gross,” sighed the child at the old man’s bread and butter. Pickled egg. A slice of wing. The radio blared, “Hey daddy!” And me with my sock. Feet slender, calm, (pious). “Splay your right sacral notch!” � 30 � �His toes are not cupped. The outer arch rests stick-like on the rug. Pulling the wind (the agile neck of God) to his gown’s empty attention. � 31 � �Without words (booty). His name fissionable. Like a vestment or cloud. Each sucker readily yields. “How many am I?” asked the jina. � 32 � �“Pay heed,” warned the late Ustad. “A brook which . . . you know . . . glistens.” His madhyam flashed. (Her armature ran out.) Tooth of feet. (She’d dressed like a sister.) � 33 � �The slung. Carp. Each interval a chasm. A chain (slung) the tame one (triumvirate). Now we. Druids in thrall. Fulsome eye, tie, catch. � 34 � �The stone of him. It’s green. I hid the ring (the quick to stop the strings). My sound. (A shell dismounts.) Jet black waves roil through the fission. Nails and space by my use. � 35 � �Beam empty. Ennui. That among all other diction. Butter of land half bent in plea. Hey Ram (Guru-shishya parampara). � 36 � �Ramkali. Ramkali. My heart, sarodiyas. I will ask the king to help. He’s the badshah of this land. He will save the poor Darbari. “Tabla?” (The tehzeeh of the durbar’d felt.) � 37 � �Like the slit in his shirt, chest to neck-button. A gourd was all. A boat (a craft). Hung from rafters along with calendars and bracken. Telling palms (the lines and rhythms of noon). � 38 � �A son’s goatee (without umbrella). Please sir, but his smile gave it away. A song (a plea) in my sky-lit tayakhanas. Tame eyes. Big, yes, but tame nonetheless. � 39 � �Khayal in two (the grains of your black beard). Sarod (of port) a scarf. I feel me through the nape of your umbrella. We drink, eat, smile like geese. � 40 � �Cousin. Do not smirk. The beauty of laughter quietly through the flowers. Abba Abba comfort me. Let me rest by your feet. Cirrus minion (noxious hands) pulling truffles of gas. � 41 � �Near the dargah a tamarind whose leaves bestow resonance. Gemini claw. I am me (humped). Yet I. Ticklish. In the rain carnival poppies. My legs are brown. My chador floats every which way. � 42 � �“Wouldn’t it have been smarter . . . ” a turbaned-one began. Urban bars, fretless like I said. “Veenas, gottuvadyams, esrajes, surbahars.” “For dregs of song, journey to the world of thumris.” � 43 � �Calling calling (the tusk in smithereens). Hail again. Steps are made by a person. He shrieks notes as a gull shrieks rivers. We had you. What happened? � 44 � �Peacocks cry my daily riyaz. Bangles and silk jubilant by the fairy books. A gabled roof, a pane of sole, truce of my ear’s solace. Alone, terrified, aching for the bird. � 45 � �Cloth of white. Doveness. Oh her. (A tribute to the night.) Your gown embossed. The thumb accepts. Looking squarely through three thick glasses. � 46 � �My little gourd plays da. Raising my chin from the rattan carpet. Them gigs of reprieve. (A public avowal.) Sons in triage . . . shishya. � 47 � �We gest (rose). “Try wiggling your pinky. Suck it out. Inhale.” Her dot contempt. Her brocade maw. “I put him in my pocket. I didn’t know what to do.” � 48 � �Disparate. Nib of intelligence scour the pier. I am fed. I grow. I dilate pretty. But the Ferris-wheel was getting to be uncomfortable. � 49 � �Stork. Listen. Naked wood of vast implementation. Chador-studded I (on my stair throne). We wish you . . . saying . . . shortened by my breath. � 50 � �MEANWHILE THE RABBIT ��Meanwhile the rabbit. Kalashree. (He’d named the home.) A sprig of rind, its blemish obtuse. What not to tell the pilgrim. � 53 � �My ribs protrude. I cannot twist. Papa kirtankar. (She’d stared at the reef.) She a shell. The turtle quiet. Last light trickling down the hill. � 54 � �Dust voiced. Yeh. (The soup isn’t quite ready.) Steam YEOW. Apple melon. Strung out. Whence . . . well . . . the crippled boy kept staring. She sent me a picture of her horse. (I’d asked for a picture of her.) I said I understand the importance of your horse, but you don’t understand what it’s like to be a mother. � 55 � �Radha danced disporting my young mind. Reindeer (verdant) amongst the marigolds and cane. For me (the shadow puppet) wiping grease from the confection. Tendrils on the cob (which were well-washed). � 56 � �Feet and am I? “I’m jealous,” she’d told the hemorrhaging person. Its knee was bruised. A yellowish scar slashed its lower thigh. Fellow tulip. (The scholar’d looked it up.) � 57 � �Of heart plant. Dome-child blossom. He feeds. I expel essence. Which wing will he call his one day? � 58 � �“My car has food,” the young woman said. Her eye fell to the porch (as if its cradle were invisible). The day was green. On the parapet (on the shoddy backdrop). Grim leaves purred (absorbing three buckets of water). � 59 � �Was she like Ashoka? (Lavishly smearing butter.) Her hacienda hugged a courtyard full of palms. Ladybird (harbinger) bake me a cake. Ethereal cream . . . (she’d put her hands in the snana). � 60 � �Plum subsides (though twigs, rabbits . . .) Rain beyond rain. (Locks of gray.) Remember dawn, the day of her son? A fat-bellied dove hustled a meal merrily. Slow-waddled bird. In and out between the rungs. � 61 � �Gwalior city. Gwalior durbar. I am an exclusive rat. Wine-colored, golden-eyed. My maker, thick-skinned. Inwardly we prance. Bhajan. Tambura. Namaaz from a nearby mosque. Pony, stay alive (please). � 62 � �Demetrius of trees. Kalpavriksha of the lengthening day. Doe-eyed virgin, on the mat, like Mary. She squeaks. (The silver cradle tips.) Ambrosia only works for kids. � 63 � �Banyan of sorrow. Will she cry? She went to the river (singing bad lands of youth). Autumn luv. We’ve had our words. Mandir of hearts. (Votive. Celestial.) � 64 � �O Ram. I (the Talmud). Maladies of children yarmulke or no. (Sari-clad) festooned with swags, hollering beneath the coverlets. “Panchamrita,” cried the deity, mahogany voice cascading from the poster. � 65 � �Boy, where are you going? The sun is raw. Graupel coat the backyard lot. Icy peas, though the vehicle hadn’t wobbled. Hinged in three. Drifting from the sky. � 66 � �Quickening kid. Taker mid-fox (scurrying to the riff ). (To raft glee). Put his head upon the pony. “Tell me your name, ma’am,” the knickered being was saying. But it was late coming. Seemed each morning to be more and more of a struggle. � 67 � �I am the pretty one. (Overheard, though a train was passing.) Length of curl or upper hair of whisker. Rough sir. My insignia quarrelsome. Of righteousness between the walls, towers and so forth. � 68 � �Tally marvelously. (She’d dropped a pin.) A group of hair popped up from a little lei. Impish. (I am eleven.) Proud of a meal a season. Which tub? How many halves? � 69 � �Mammy! Mammy! (The hands of the woman held a kerchief.) Pearly-white her taffeta (shinnying). “Daddy, that slave woman looked at me funny. See her eyes? They follow me.” Louis fish (alt). She’d sat in her frame for years. � 70 � �“You cheated,” said the teacher. (Waving her hand, she’d been so excited.) “Are we women.” (Tuck-voiced her.) A manger of holy (logs, bells, clay bell). “Tell me again, mama-la.” � 71 � �Say bread (sputtering wheels hologram). She (aye) what vision intent. The woman looked. Ate an apple that was green. Brats spat (hopped about the aisle.) � 72 � �The child sighed, “My lovely bra.” Sing to me mother. Fix me chocolate tea. She’d said “dog.” (The pooja was rescheduled.) Hooligan sirens turned out to be stop-lights. � 73 � �Sugarpie. (Her pencil sharp.) Of jubilant quantity. The whore. Who sucks songs. Rapidly gyrating forward. Sucking her (throat). Swallowing her throat. � 74 � �Hail from land with sheep, mice, cheese. The booty awry with salt. Negligent urchin. (“I’m tired of pancakes.”) And he Saturdays, sucking his raw egg. � 75 � ��HER (TO) EXORCIZE (HAIR FLICKING) GABARDINE ��Allure. Her gentle huskiness. She’d moved, studied, wandered in the night. This gharana (dosha of the beaten man). Troubadour. Wild wind. Shivered the wireless (gherao). � 79 � �A pheasant ring. Cow dung (bracketed). Took a poop (which instills me always). Beaten girl. Several satchels humped her side. A muscle shirt her scrawny thighs. � 80 � �Cities of wind. So many within a day. Tambura. Four (till midnight). Stems broke. Celestial dust scattered. The elves of Harlem sleep less and less. � 81 � �We dapple (cow). Shellac vase, yes. Penurious round (Dublin) to the quick. Sorrel (while eating potatoes). � 82 � �Saigal (pilgrim). Hailed from London. Isaac, broker of falseness. As of jacquard . . . but he’s gone. Savage yard among the Dutch. � 83 � �Galaxy (wailing). Ooooooooooooommmmmmmm. Ooooooooooooooooooo beat with their feet. Nestled in a gulch (brackened hip of boats). Dip here. Dip here. � 84 � �Saffron mizzled off the wreath. “A pantheon of ink,” he’d read. Shesham is a kind of wood. The dhurrie’s of pistachio. But his eyes blurred (which the rain enhanced). � 85 � ��Sweet Sue. I mean Sweet Sue. ��Barley and (fish) jumped. Landing like the dead. (Her ring was made of tarragon.) His mouse. His room. Only the canary saw what was happening. That’s the point of alabaster. � 89 � �Wild tree (kept behind) hidden behind plinth. Where tobacco rolled like pearls of living (dew). “We’d played in the sandbox” (felt each other whisper). Counted on the teacher not seeing her panties. � 90 � �(Was) prince. However long it was. Her dress (marvelously) shed the pale wheat. Long-lasting whorls wintered on lawns of crisp (warm) leaves. At twilight a few of ’em on her tummy. � 91 � �Lips of palm chewing gum-balls readily. He’d died the other day. At least that’s what someone said. But her tendus . . . he’d beamed a few days ago. The man said “trots.” (Nibbled at the cream.) � 92 � �Clemency of sand. No doubt it’s a Christmas thing. “No seriously.” The woman’d missed her train. She sees stars basking on the brink of day. Miles of road for the pony catchers. � 93 � �Saying rotund (a pitta form). Soft, round. Nestled in steps. A little bit of flame. See the bangle at his elbow? His underpants are white and sure. � 94 � �Licking it blue. The slit (sweat) like an animal. Well her friend said so, but she felt calm. Some people were swimming. Flip-flopped the junky streets. Convection clouds steely (ineffable) rose and fell across the glade. � 95 � �Plum nut. Many many plums. (The room Was getting warmer.) He’d slipped off his sweater. Laid it on the bed. A hole scratched by pigeons. (Product of the desert.) But he only thought of toothpicks. � 96 � �“Let’s talk,” said the tribes-girl. “Where eels wave at the bottom of the ocean . . . ” Corpulent (fleshy). To made (the back body). Green green boughs well-hidden from the animal. � 97 � �Talons touch a tree. Gesticulate a horse-run. The tassels of her rosary ruffled in the windless air. Climb high. (Let me stiff.) Staring at the shirt in utter recognition. We bask. Butterflies and worms also. � 98 � �Around the wheel, hanging like a bell. (Wheel) of green pine. Snow fell from the pine’s white boughs. We talked and except for the all white world . . . Even the tree’s bells. � 99 � �“Dish!” she’d cried. “Cherry” (to the white face). (To be bellyful.) Tummy out en bas. Booing Purcell whose . . . (wanting in Cartesian spirit). “What train did you . . .” (but the loud speaker muffled the rest). � 100 � �Hunted gamefowl near the brook. “Sweetie, could you move so your mama can see.” Warden (petunia) whose scrotum . . . its vein varicose. Detained in the bush. No flying wisps. � 101 � �“The barre (the Grecian-crisscross) rose,” crazy Susan most lustily cried. Creature of five (duck, buns, gale). Each fork thrust as if she were born today. Breast (stretched) crucified the claw. � 102 � �“Naif!” (The old man humbled.) Silo (acuity). He’d named the brand. Roiling from Egypt. Fix me (fix me) as were a meteor. Ducklings (goslings) throbbing throats of peace. � 103 � �Hostile grasses plugged the river swathing Jesus in her mind. Trembling clouds covering billboards (swish swish) languorous and cool. The dodo (carved) sobbed by the finial. “The size of my ring happens.” � 104 � �Thai pop. Yule log bluesy. Factious seraph bidden (classical) sandy (shrubby) fields. On the wall was painted a sun. (Young girl skating alone.) A bunny hobbled over. (It was a man in a bunny suit.) � 105 � �Savior, tour the throne, please. (A plaintive chord) rank and still. Make sure the madams . . . hieroglyphs reek mutiny. Through her crinolines, the lady’s wobbly legs. � 106 � �Picture-show (follicle). Crowds on the wing at their lessons of dance. Hunchback dames (with a) tall (lithe) body. A fetal parody, which the Balkans, as their steps show . . . � 107 � �Make a star. (Tides are narrowing.) “Dig ’em out! Dig ’em out!” He’d heard dreams. Acres of bottles. Caroling whorls. “Did he use a ladder?” someone’d asked. The girl woke just as he was leaving. � 108 � �From the plum (savage) of eagle. Pristine mist accomplished over snow. She’d scurried to the stage. “The king will come!” she’d shouted. And his queen. (He thought he was.) � 109 � �Trumpeter (an) anchor. Tide-like crawl, which the pharaoh, well . . . it angered him. “I was on a day-trip.” (She’d squinted in the sun.) Elpenor didn’t care. � 110 � �So he’d died (the kid’s father). Her leotard (like a jumpsuit) crept across her thighs. “Heavens!” she’d said. “Usually I wear two t-shirts.” But the boy continued working with his crayolas. � 111 � �Thrown horses oblique to the storm. Lucky moon (the) blue-eyed (a) fury. “Will the oysters be sorry? I hope not,” called the child. A small bump on her lip, gnarly, hard, the same color as her lip. � 112 � �Tender aperture tenderly shedding bulbs. Bitter seed, anyway, at the full moon’s end. Barreling, honey. Closing the (tuber) years. Dipping into music, gigue (bourrée) Rigoletto’s ritornello. � 113 � �Slow blown and harm. Transit of season, lured, provocative. “Shall we dance?” he said. (He understood calamity.) Olive oil bubbled amidst little sprigs of parsley. � 114 � �Ponytails fly. Giddyup! Giddyup! A ringmaster to his circus trills. “Your philosophy, sir?” But his lover couldn’t stand the noise. “Hats!” she’d said. “I make hats.” � 115 � �Tea collects viz. Grand Central Station. Why stop? Why sell soda? The frog laid eggs (which came into existence). They’d crawled around the boat-bottom, heavyset (hungry-looking). � 116 � �Yoked (the hoofbeats) clickety-clack. A circle of stone trussed (an inner circle) of light. Red lanterns in the lobby smelled ruby-red (garish). Blood-thirsty bush thorns. � 117 � �To hear from borrowings. Sad Joe reaching death. “I hung it on my chair, put a bear in it,” she’d said. Her husband’s seed (a self-pursuing shrub). � 118 � �Lay me down, Sebastian. I cannot rock. Her tooth was black like the old Japanese. Gargoyle shout. Shriek from your arraignment. Gallery of blue, ladened with altar-blue. � 119 � �Lion’s position obscure. Sanskrit (of) obscure. A meadowlark riding the sun bareback. Its sermon on the grass. Flummoxed by the other birds. “Where’j’ya get . . .” but the ladder’d tipped. � 120 � �I heat (I wait) legs. Which the rocking horse cannot subdue. Plain man Francis. (Shelling) peanuts for the mob. “Dig I! You get where I’m at?” (He’d tampered with the boots.) � 121 � �Born of gruel (off) the balalaika. She’d hemmed and hawed (under brown and yellow cloth). O Rangasayee orbiting son of wind. Of course he was concerned fearing the worst. � 122 � �Sweet Sue. I mean Sweet Sue. Nimbler than jelly bones. A feed salesman played ragtime tunes. “Was he Welsh?” � 123 � �“In tandem,” she’d said meaning cinnabar (literally). Ideogram for retching (rocks, bones, sticks). Stacks of sticks. Funny you should mention it. The aqueduct was under spring blossoms. � 124 � �Deer and ant arose. Wench of brine caromed through iniquity. “Toby one. Toby two. Train yourselves, cellarer.” Wandering. (Had her eyebrows plucked.) � 125 � �Make the shells collide. “I hate conflict,” said the woman quietly. But her teeth rang. (Smelled of vinegar, basmati rice.) The earth opened. Fields of birds whispered. � 126 � �Tala, he’d said, is a rhythmic mold. Hebrew vowels sizzled. (He held the yardstick solid.) Climax two: the father buys a hat. Even so the house was peaceful. � 127 � �A Madeleine smelled milky white. Yet its shell. The grooves of its humpback. Sweetie cry. The froth of (high) tea. Caress its knee like a duckling. � 128 � �Singing Now I am alone. (I walked quickly.) Jester of met. We fell together. Jelly at two. Pigs feet at five. Parsley man. I sing and eat stalks of it. � 129 � �Wolverine and tips of them. She’d lovingly wrapped their mustard-colored box. The day burned. Mind on belly (tangled). It glanced off the mossy rock. � 130 � �Without motion. (Without props.) The legacy of squirrels’ long reddish Elegance. Be ready, egret. (She’d felt the tug.) Wet earth’ll grab even your footsteps. � 131 � �Laios (oracle) whom involution. Ganglia difficult to appease. Like Zeus whose tendons . . . (enigma) of three pool. Philoctedes, Achilles, all were damaged. � 132 � �Hollow bells of Christmas rang. “I am moved,” said the man. Stocking floated from the ceiling. Ribbons dangled from my teeth. � 133 � �Seedling wrung greenest. Baby frost coats the dropping pines. Half shed like fairies in the night. Red bridge (cedar red) twice. � 134 � �I am a boat. Goats plea (hither) making ready also. Slam. King slam. We be taken godlings. Esplanade. That match arcane. � 135 � �Facing silk flowers. Tides and multi-waters digress. The plait of her forehead, the small of her neck. I kiss its locks to freshen it. � 136 � �Box (off) the winter doll. Comely shul gentility. Cyber-chat (windy) high. “Naw! It’s only a game. Come on.” � 137 � �Cat of stilt. (Local cur.) Kicking lustily. Nick. “The languages of Brij . . .” she’d begun in the vicissitudes. Grid (say) lineament. The berries are stuck. � 138 � �“What day is it, Mel?” she’d shouted from the car. Buoys on the rocky coast gyre upon gyre. Woe-begotten, fending (wending) “Can I eat, Ma?” whimpered to hay. (After) the nag. “My day is ruined.” � 139 � ��RAGA was designed and set into type by Linda Davis at Star Type, Berkeley, using Poliphilus and Blado. Poliphilus was copied using a roman font cut in Venice in 1499 by Francesco Griffo. The italic font Blado is based on a font designed by Ludovio degli Arrighi about 1526. The type was digitized by the Monotype Corporation type foundry. ������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Raga Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-05-23 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2004 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 972611541 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_047 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 152 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/cdc4f960d20237356e88167faa97aedc.pdf f96bf4041194d36e5c67633a60c14084 PDF Text Text Gail Sher Rouge to beak having me Moving Letters Press Paris lg83 ��Rouge to beak having me Banner this could be During wane were along • r1ver �Tribes or limb Swabs metal cattle �Styes scanned Were considers total colony �Sachels north spines still Adorable can That beads death so �Rushes Yule say family These sprig hare can . scrap1ngs father �Whether ark girdles deer Graining said Constant would munch its body �Low bud deers Chews cry momentarily deers �Sets which elephant Receives said having rotation �II. Spill to whose one Be gasped mine drum samples Dry straps: no pureness �No woo is Sole kinder What knob selves �Whew (or) mass Dimmer& biers math �No scour fur Mongers is stilling �Or find accumulations (Bundt) lift to prize one �Ones skim faultless Mollusk foams so twist himself �Grace (still) fruit Geer: pike to fruit Budges of: auks (why) shyster �Fond out Maws as tone �Wings licks as Tryst yet: dual �Trees (the) kite tithe Freezes stud (to) garnish thee �Behests peering candies Twins (particles) aunt so �Fey (to) band Wombs: ham (so) told dirigible �III. Exemplifies sags (ma) I do Bowls cattle sacred girl �If cereal were blueish nights Purges (bowl) (gloves) ugliness for her �Peas one abdomen Piquant constructs (heals) what queue Bleeds proms is (in) soul �Briars ol' bud Petals food (stripling) whose disciples graze could �Sluts wept arm Gunny names �Nibs prayer melodically Law snows (corn) • as poverttes at her �Beads words: reeds etched yet Prolapsed heard (bull) stuffs �Plentiful skins men sounds Does mounds: (annuity) feels gowns on �(Flies) either • stnger Stringent folds: throngs will �Abound: abounds his Drinks afresh: studs neuter (moist) count �Micro (winters) further Swallow has shrill (some) terribly dawn �Peters (the) self jails undress The tlee: (either) sides pulse ��26 hand-printed copies signed and lettered by the author and the painter. l5o off-set facsimiles. Cover painting by Sandra Fisher. Cover printed by Coracle Press. Copyright Gail Sher. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rouge to beak having me Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Moving Letters Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-04-13 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1983 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_031 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 37 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/fe39a1708aabe51418e0f2e092b16464.pdf af7a89142a94e57abb8057f62772b593 PDF Text Text Marginalia Gail Sher Rodent Press Chicago �Published October, 1997 in Chicago, Illinois by Rodent Press First edition © Gail Sher 1997 The cover for Marginalia was designed by Lory Poulson. Portions of Marginalia have previously appeared in Chain, big allis, Raddle Moon, Juxta, Generator Press and Object. Marginalia is available through Small Press Distribution 1814 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702 (510) 549-3336 ISBN: 1-887289-29-1 �contents The Early Work n The Paintings of Social Concern 23 Innocent Diversions 35 Doors and Walls 43 The Sleep of Mortals, The Watch of Angels 49 The Spanish Pictures 59 Lovers 67 Death 79 Resurrection 85 The Seven Sacraments 91 ��to my beloved Brendan ��These poems were inspired by the paintings of George Tooker ��the early work ��Audience 1945 I I swan Toltec lumberyard (blimp) Jesse lilies I3 �Dance I946 pan ney Welsh burl Wotan la la la �Children and Spastics 1946 consuetude see see She IS �The Chess Game I947 thy blue skull sweet game gyre gyre: sheltering deer-piece r6 �Self Portrait 1947 Pilate: dog bead dharna Bristol dray Merlin (paw-paw) I7 �Coney Island 1948 soeur Phillippa tore Ali (Pure Land) r8 �Bird Watchers 1948 dos-a-dos not. not aleatory I9 �Festa 1948 piper (St.) the they elm nog: Jinenjo (spriglet) a alee crepuscular 20 �Market 1949 Judaeus flocks at' a smithy (caryatid) 2I �Cornice I949 hip-hop. the sorrel (so) starlet pointillist Philoctetes 22 �the paintings of social concern ��The Subway r950 nip atrium. tip or are femme wits "hoos-thief" (washes Bartholomew) Elle. yes till asay chitch at 25 �Government Bureau r956 a-tisket Wenceslaus urn plateful what/ hoosier sackcoat �Supermarket 1973 redbreast oops! Way or (slicker) Cheapside cowbell tell new wetlands teary-eyed 27 �Highway I953 Tudor. wry by plume Tibet tri do chrysalis aegis. @Asia kill prescient Balkan fjord. Yeti senora wolfskin �Men and Women Fighting 1958 Yantra huntress: congas tzaddik golashes 29 �Yam a Yama: chedis ojas Anschluss clackity clack. pin-the-tail Abednego 30 �Waiting Room II 1982 U• • Ja Ja n sou'wester. [puzzlement] "pulps" Shadrach (Meshach) rocking yes cowgirl Escene mere (deeper) gosling 3I �Corporate Decision 1983 pins & once tomboy (shant) puzzlement jaggery the stargaze: 32 �Terminal r986 bohea (thew) "endlessly rocking" bluebell (four leaf) mar Ophelia "the two of them" 33 ��innocent diversions ��Divers 1952 rudraksha wildwood oink oink Malachi beadgame tongue & tongues ferry 37 �Acrobats 1950-52 floozy it slurp 'tis Paschel Remus pole water twig twig (seem) 'til tail stone �Garden Party r952 stone. old stone caterwauling bambina 39 �In the Summer House 1958 peep-show the Doges: sea-chair priapie chaws chaw snickers cd. bloodstock "hit on" Hiei Aeffic "maybe I can" 40 �Lantern 1977 swan. oral swan (yew) mani cartwheel starry (do it) mulatto/ sea-language 4I �Lanterns 1986 1. Abiquiu the jug. the (seahawk) 2. HOWL plump honeygrass pipergrass 3. lightfoot saluki Enkidu rose-leaves 4. Ox free (nor) rose 42 �doors and walls ��yellow bird (blowy) night train 45 �Two Heads rg66 chil'en daybreak gher Euston blue rice bird �White Walll964-65 cisco filliloo gum tree gum tree snow cock mo' end-product 47 �Farewell rg66 o'libra snowgoose Westerly stegasauras �the sleep of mortals, the watch of angels ��Sleepers I 1951 Pincio bulrush (sal) kylix bin kusha grass 5I �Sleepers II I959 taiga Ellesmere badlands nil marionette 52 �Fig Tree I955 chatzka! mass moon sri (gal) antebellum 53 �Entertainers 1959-6o gaijin gaijin sweetie. habitue sweetly so Nuba per chance foot. deer bell 54 �Three Heads r967 terrier ewe-lamb I'll watchbell 55 �Three Women I959·6o red red craw .ell mown s6 �Meadow I rg6o-6r ima aba (sandboy). swot no luncheonette 57 �Meadow II I977?9 Ignatius jar: nib the on Alexius (wildcat) wildcard This be shirt-sleeves �the spanish pictures ��Two Women with Laundry I974 Vevey intelligentsia mullet negus epergne florins blue-chip 6r �Claveles I974 Trappist celery to sea grass winds (nail) �Pot of Aloes 1974 qi face art. barrow Father �Woman with Oranges I977 Tipper (drear) dint Thor johnswort �Still Life with Oranges rg8o poor-jack Veery pol whoop pol batteau (Veery) burble. deadwater 6s ��lovers ��Lovers I r959 1. dight a jig moon 2. jabs gaffe limn (gig) dilatory 3. dee-dum corpuscle tho' A mogul (shine-on) �Lovers II rg6o (licit) pulque churro rig. play-off 70 �Tree r965 au Eve (hill tribe) l ox sol to (our task) 7I �Table I 1959 "musketo" fracas ice lock. had 72 �Odalisque 1967 namu Bod snowbird Tara Mater cow cow COW jooal pea-pod (shy sly) 73 �Embrace I I979 tenement jai deer-basket jai prow (chew) enchantress 74 �Embrace II r98r sparyard . . . dog-earred furl ki: ne'er cryer entrain 75 �Embrace III 1983 missy bo-peep 'twill (nine) corbel to cow sty sky seem spar seem: grey-dog �Garden Wall 1990 whip-o-will (right by) green grow the rushes. constable green-a fiddle (the rushes) evangel-poem 77 ��death ��Standing Figures I973 "make me" chihuahua. putative ivied cheetah ghillie edginess 8r �Woman at the Wall I974 but shuffleboard Esu (flea-seed) "pet-notion" �The Lesson 1974 killer wh. tea-leaves tsk tsk tsk jabari (spinster) breakable person 83 ��resurrection ��Supper 1963 scow wu wei [reach-me-down] baccarat Lydia "kist" ululate �Girl Praying 1977 bluebird Sarajevo para Negro Valhalla bitch cru 88 �Landscape with Figures II 1985 tat slow-boat trough (queerly) Rick starling starlet osier tamarisk Oology 8g �Embrace of Piece I r986 mockernut mockernut "our maker". riverward �the seven sacraments ��The Seven Sacraments (A Celebration of Life) rg8o Clare (see fit) .Godpool 93 �The Fourth Station of the Cross: Jesus Encounters His Holy Mother 1984 thru Him marigold summertime summertime bluefish (pokeweed) WANTED kept cups 94 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Marginalia Subject The topic of the resource Tooker, George -- Poetry Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rodent Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-04-13 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1997 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 1887289291 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_030 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. The Early Work The Paintings of Social Concern Innocent Diversions Doors and Walls The Sleep of Mortals, The Watch of Angels The Spanish Pictures Lovers Death Resurrection The Seven Sacraments Extent The size or duration of the resource. 92 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/badc40c3b41a2ca1f38d96a8eb49ac8d.pdf fbd1f44bb333d05deaa3500903f04f3c PDF Text Text la GAIL SHER RODENT Pre55 e Boulder, Colorado �Published July, 1996 in Boulder, Colorado by Rodent Press, 303-440-8125. First Edition © Gail Sher 1996 The cover for Ia was designed and letterpress printed by Brad O'Sullivan on the Kavyayantra Press at The Naropa Institute. "Haiku brevity, mantra1-p sorcery - each page of Gail Sher's book could be torn from a tender grimoire of the future. Imagine hearing it chanted to incense in a back room! I find crisp demonstration here that in our upcoming millennium poems might occur in all tongues simultaneously." - Andrew Schelling �to my beloved Brendan ��Yarmulke twilight Marlena Ya' Sobranje �Ippolito tsampa Purine Missouri to divestment Bonpo �2 Pater Kailas Dargo islet dri boa portent �Mazurka sarong cum yang telos ouija dos Gongora �Alhambras d'arc Attila jejune paschal Hum summoner �Da episcopal Sisyphus : natter bolus Canaan �3 Rose a ion Figurine [gare] emergent knifer �Celebes Arle Adonoi pucker �Chatelaine tic shiktza capstan purr daya Jersey �4 piazza Sancta bellwether Integument vedettes Veronica excision Quaternary �Sutlej coracle Losar claret demene �Wence Ali beth Momo nuestro ream [deafness] �Bottine elenchus Vale chouan Vale grebe paparazzi �tarboosh Barkhor haymarket turret Clare �zabya thistles mulatress nought arag katas pag: [ sho] pag �6 do-chod escene Ia flip Siling IIi �fosse & dahl desi mandragora �Wu Gamora [nagas] wools �U-me[rib] tashi urga philings nation �7 longhis Ibiza dab Lam Rim koji [ syces] Mussoorie �lint ewe damnyen lingbu casaba yangjin �de cod MO chigye prefecture: [tin-pan] �Saddhu [Mo] kuden Gtsang rten misericord �8 Do Anhui wu-i Ami-chiri Taktser songbird set [Taktser] tii osprey shang TAR �huevos tatara gha hoot hoot nawa Drichu �let Yahweh gorse tho' trough niu-xi poria �9 0. said fines Raj ghat Sungdii bordello �rag: te khan langurs repeated �sho scarp sal dacoit palm Tatas feretory �10 Argali Bo craps kongpa nurika [chorister] �prosad ibex kosi onagers �has Tukcha spiti dzo shally spiti �dzomo da anklette dzo ga-te dzomo Ia �II U char Tus [sakara flowerette] �gospel D cash draba English �pika gho sha (wat kama princelet) �kumis manja. manja lintel Ganesh o' alift �12 facticity gCod arcane (acarya) �mala chipko goshala oddments �Ta Gairlane Bylakuppe tri-lung �sri jisa: dye eyrie Cirrus �13 'n tabla pishti a Desi prescient cho Oyu �Ta Ho Pa Nod Dropka Pomre Ave [ serengeti] �ke dofia el dove ke cangue namro ch'an �kumba Jiaozi tableland QinMu Us Xi an �14 gau jolmo leh fracas [juji Guanto sere reAppaloosa] �d0 navadurga Elle nagas nagas domination �Khandroma Khandroma tho' Tao an dakini blanco �Nyingma ployps do klux umph klu Hecate �15 Yana II Sungpo mi rna ym Aum [Taweche] Nenana �Nu jetsunma Nu amphag �gter-ma Rahula gter-ma [kayas] nil bleed portions Yum Hrl beading �r6 Geb Nat Ymir [Salween tho' pellicle] �shillibeer yam Indra gaucho [eftsoons its exterminate] �gaur salaam throat-flower green-o Lot Maerose [gillyflower] �yu lhamo solra Yu pamo on Lu melech soIra �tsa-tsa neskorpa chasuble [is bas] Thurgod �yu thog Banajong rigs nga [sky] �18 Hum ghabji ejen [lung] gesel un gesel Hashangs �swag: ghabji [sweetie] �wink: oboo da-larna oboo da-larna nicolo jarnu Dolonar �19 Volga damcha cham [saere] rapeseed �puck tebeg tebeg shatar boorsogh �dahlia Taipei Noh Vas6dhara analect �marrows Octavos zebu [flauto] Orner �20 Wen I Ten wings than Yao chagh �Tuscan ded-lama [chagh] Ju Costa Ko abattis sunfish �cinquefoil Li rut Yunnan wolverine Pleidesse �2I Levite West tho' I dreadlocks SnowWu Che ko water-village �cherry agley cherry agley bad Agni kasi plumeria �Rasta Po not willows Agni Samkaksika �bit bit Osel sal kotis westerly � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource La Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rodent Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-04-13 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1996 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 1887289267 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_029 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 76 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/bb33ea59d9e85728e092d50fad880640.pdf f0f68c69492df101b44b4a7e32a07ddc PDF Text Text © 1995 by Gail Sher This book was funded in part by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. �gail sher paradigm press providence ��KUKLOS (Greek): circle, circular body; circu- lar motion; ring, wheel, disc, eye, shield; town wall ��Tamarind Esau. & taps. Kadish. �~ ~ emmJII!ll I~ ~ ~ ~ I I I I ~ i~ ~ I I ~ ~ Clam St. Clare too faces. ~ ~ ~ I ~ I I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ Iii~ I I I I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I I ~ I I ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ Iii �IiiI Jasper roach cans Mishna red wing. �D I I ~ I~ ~ I ~ ~ I ~ ~ iI II !~ Betel has like dipso trough. Padma so bath. I ~ ~ II I ~ ~ ~ I I II ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ I I I~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ [!)~ [!) �Criss par trinity. Hath Da. ~ ~ Peanut Hosanna. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ;~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ �Wassail pied cum brindle ergo. �Horse o' sphinx. America. Non dalmatian. �~ [!) ~ I~ = I= = ~ i~ ~ * Turbo fra. ~ I~ i ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~~ Islet rebec daybed. ~ ~ I = ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I [!)~ [!) �I manna cossack. Bodhgaya. Soeur roe Padua. �• ~ [!) ~ ~ ~ ~ I I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i Ii ~ I i ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ Milagro. Cunt un. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i i ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ m ~ ~ ~ ~ 1§1 [!)~ [!) �Baptist ash. Meaty noh poi. �~lill - ;= I II ~ ~ Kurmos. New gorse. ~ Pony sweetyard. = I~ ~ ~ = = = = ~ lil~ I;; ; ; ; ; ;~ ~ ~ -;~ = ;= ~ lil �Contessa bushes. Too feces. Gazetier. • lr:!ll �(!] ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ·~ I I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Angst 'cause paison. Tilsit. Lacre tarpaulin. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ I I I I~ (!]~ (!] �~ ~ I~ Saguaro letterer. Pistol catalpa. Their shells. ~ ~ I~ ~ I~ • ~ ;~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ ~ ~1!1 �1!1~ 1!1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ [~ ~ I~ * Skater skater. Eighty cantina maypole. 1!1~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1!1 ��Kapok roses. Tailor tailor. Mimosa a mitt. �I ~m ~ I ~ I ~ I I I~ ~ I~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Charybdis in queen. Scyla. Swaha. Mahjung. Schnaps. II~ I ~ ~ I I m ~ I ~ ~ I I ~ ~ ~ = ~ I ~ [!]~ !!] �Bris of Odessa rice laps. �II ~ [!) II} ~ ~ ~ I~ I I II~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * Grazes Mu corona. Pied carrot. Telos Balaam nicolo. I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ [!)~ [!) �0-chai fete. Compline flushing raga hey seeds. ·1~1 ~(!] �; ~ ~ I IE II I~ I ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Hibiscus. Non seraph. I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I I ~ ~ I ~ ~ I ~ I ~ I Spinaker. Agnus thru sayeth. Eros Dei caritas. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ I ~ I [!)~1!1 �Oxlips Gaias ga-te ga-te. Helix @ lane. �~ 1!1 ~ ~ ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ m ~ ~ ~ I I II Sannyas crow Janaki. Loden cloth. Bonny Dom catched. 5~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1!1~ [!) �-~ ~ 1!1 ~ ~ ~ ·~ I~ I~ * Osiris co rider. I~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ ~ ~~ Hanuman cup. Cam floatation shiksa. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1!1~ [!] �l!J~ ; ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ l!J I ~ ~ ~ Okasa askari. Ganjha blouse Goth zydeco salaam. l!J~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ l!J �Piper fra Galilee. Ashkenazi traps. Well furze. Tapes pique trumpeter. �~ ~ l!l I~ - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ I I I ~ I I I I ~ I I I I I ~ ~ ~ ~ Goby gnu assize. Lo cod. Sabine the reichstag. (!]~ II II I I I I I I ~ ~ I ~ ~ I I I~ l!l �mr;! • ~ ~ Tivoli wight. The atone sri. Joseph angus lassitude. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1!1~ [!) �a. �Nu madonna sahib. Leechee simcha. Taj mesquite pease. Witch Mt. kyke. ��D ~ ~· ~ ~ ~ I Yangtze Gretal. Corazon. Salon ex davin. Rivka Shaker they've sorti. ~ ~I~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1!1~ 1!1 �Iii~ I~ = ~ = ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ I ~ = = ~ ~ ~ = ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Iii = ~ Kachina fire. Sunyata bambino in names. Gelt. Fellatio tempest dona. Nicholas. Wotan garment. ~ ~ ~ ~ ; ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ [!]~ 1!1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ �* To drumline geese. Satyr Gobi. Nifios Carolina. �(!)~ (!) ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ [!]~ 1!1 Tunny mullet Bowbells. Kennedya jibon. Jheelroy vulpine persea. Padma frumenty. �~ ~ ~ ; ~ ~ ml I I ~ ~ I~ I Lhasa to bade. i~ Tulip Dachau. This Alps. ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ;~ I .[!] �1!1~1!11 il ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ ~ I ~ I ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ I I~ I ~ Negrillo. Shaman asana fell jai. I I ~ ~ I I 1!1~ II ~ I I I I ~ I I ~ ~ ~ ~ II I I~ 1!1 �~ 1!1 ~ ~ ~ ~ I~ ~ Sol du lavash. Esdras. Hum. I i ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ Baruch. Rune. Tamandua. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ [!)~ [!) �1!1~ 1!1 ~ ~ I~ I I I I I~ I ~ I I I I I I; Cant Perpetua. Laid. The Gretal ta-ke. ; I I ~ ;I I I ~ ~ 1!1~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ I~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ 1!1 �This book was printed in 12 pt. times at Graphic Illusions, Dennispon. Mass. Of750copies,fifty are signed and numbered by the author. The editor thanks the following patrons for their generous support of paradigm press: Kristina 11amm Donn & Temple Nelson James & Marlene Frisbie Victoria & Scott Frisbie Claudia Fishman Rachel & Jay Tarses George Rattner Ray & Frances Stark Marilyn Netter � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kuklos Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Paradigm Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-04-13 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1995 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_028 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 47 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/7a5abb8195cf7776d2514b64a0a579ad.pdf 19a016628c70ef5f4bca1fda98502ac1 PDF Text Text From another point of view the woman seems to be resting •Gail Sher �Trike • San Francisco •1982 �From another point of vie\N the \Noman seems to be resting �Naive or feelings of isolation and at the same time naive. The same woman only a feeling of sun now arrested on the floor near her chair. Rocking and making various gestures in concentrated posture. From another point of view the woman seems to be resting. Perhaps this resting is what brings the fields into play. Figures appear. The sky and the woman each unsurrounded. The sound (of no concern to anyone else) into which she feels drawn suddenly. This scene gives the impression of fields. Separated from fields by a porch. �Settles in watchful gesture. Gradual ability. Settles in place for reading and life of reading as insisted internal thing. Speaks about it softly. Volition as a kind of thought. Attributes of body (sun) and muscles of body. (Also light in marked relationship.) Somewhat confused sense or some boastfulness coupled with something else. �Time and also clouds. Texture of clouds and so forth in a continuous line or pattern. Landscape and trees. (Haze of trees.) Shoulders arms or occasional repetitive thought. �Now reads. Imagines herself in the dark room. Something recognized as dark. Shouts for the little girl. Presses forward to some extent. �Moments held clean and intact no\N appears as a \Nail. (Method and exposure to first thought.) The expression fixed. Points of softness absolutely seen by someone else. Seeing heavily or seeing effects of kno\Nn sedentary person. (Inclusive of her in an early period.) Provides a certain luminosity of detail. At the same time balance. �Suggestions in this vein. (Objects) existing in unheard sound. (Both color) and the boundaries of all objects hitherto mentioned. Trees but basically the house is the same. Reads with attention on trees shifts entering into balanced reading. Or woman lying reading. Paraphernalia of mind seen as objects coming to a complete rest. �Also as a child she had wanted to eat �Also as a child she had vvanted to eat. Without particular motive (to be) on her ovvn crossing the street on her ovvn or going through the door making an effort to buy food. �Always with amount of energy she could spend with that person (son) or even possibly some other people. Even simply listening. Not urged to but that that had already occurred. �Seen by the other people (during) the day or sometime during the course of the day (the driver) calls out something. To be phased by this. To appear calm but actually to imagine herself quarreling. �Intense expression in striving for something (intake) of food (inheritance) of something. Having asked for something to eat (in) one process to eat one (particular) part. �In bed for example (always) perpetuating (striving) in the midst of any room. Which (she) as a lonely person appreciated. Avenues and walking with such & such emotion (buses) where they seem needed. �Reversing her terminology and tendency to want something from him. (To) supply food here. (Not) to move or feel like moving. With others like her in the same mood (hiding) something received from her. Delicate relation to her (discerned) (quarter) of mind. �Children & events of the day enter her mind. Once while eating (in) quiet manner of saying something. Or being in a hurry to get somewhere. Arrangement of food at (moment) of giving it to her. �Even the lady's pressure next to her �Povverful inner lapse or undivulged sense. (Also) him in the capacity of boy. Pictures of him. Related in vvay of terrific scene (bed) or vvarm vvith hand in book of him. Through caring charged tone. Age & body as vvell as also this caring. Days later in place of children (to) see in others the possibility of her body. �Receptive position requiring this blessing. Short breaths of sun (minerals) in lap of her. Always eats (sings) walks near river humming & singing. �Focused on point of milling crovvd (assembly) of persons Cvvindovvs) doors & many people in them looking avvay. (Conversation) of vvoman in curious posture. COne) face (eventual) eloquence of her. Which moves in her. This abstraction Cvvhich) this pain vvas. �Even the lady's pressure next to her. (Roughness) of feet also some cleaning of the room. Slender girl or (old) purpose of united her. �With spread of her (sings) probing also words. Waits for bus. Borrows man's capacity (what) lay behind in pastime of several minutes. �Quantities of people among them (visualized) poised person (alert) posture of gratitude. Or in tovvards her. To utter it (to) please refurbish life compelling in this respect. Kneels before him (hovv) he felt alone. Fragrance of vvood (nails) appealing to her. �Travels in sphere of white or unhappy face . (Ignites) death response (her) in group of waking men. Defining it Cor) reads about rapture to break this pattern. To be awake like this if not disappointment to be aware of them redeeming themselves. �Perhaps there is no content paint or sun �Perhaps there is no content paint or sun. Wood or light. 1 ) Makes loving motion as of kissed one 2) Achieves resistance on a black surface . �Private inner weight. Conceives reality of strokes placed on the paper carefully. Somewhat revised circumstance (temper) of hand. �(Will) mesh in with only one passively assembled tone. 1 ) Elements of brown (tree) (justifiable) pitch 2) As a novelty or given content in the dress of a woman. �Concentrates on pattern vvith (repetitious) conception of her eating. Conception of her addressing someone. Percentage of vvords (invvard breathed vvords) along these lines. Joined by points though propelled in free-floating something (vvhich is) hovv color vvorks. �As within sleep something including him sleeping in the other room. Also the woman on the bed. Easily takes suggestion from the girl writing. 1 ) Whether from frightening circumstance 2) Short pause imposed from without 3) Repeats this constantly. �Completes act of eating (alone) tired & depressed before eating. 1 ) Only certain portions of this 2) This and religion (certain) rosaries. �A wedge or sound no one notices. Like a lot of red (in restful building) or drives up very solemn. Which turns into eating or ability of someone with talent. ��© copyright by Gail Sher 1982 Painting © copyright by Patty Arnold 1982 Published by Trike 277 23rd Avenue San Francisco. California 941 21 ISBN 0-917588-09-6 First edition of 400 copies Book design by Patty Arnold �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From another point of view the woman seems to be resting Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Trike State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1982 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 917588096 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_027 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 36 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/e3c67cbdb9e8334fc6ce160e6ea0be73.pdf e1801c8a21e156c85247906faf1cdfd6 PDF Text Text GAIL SHER �GAIL SHER �Copyright @ 1988 by Gail Sher Portions of this book first appeared in Karamu, Tramen, and Writing. �FOR BART My asthma wings. Fish are tight. The lamb is starlit. �Is the bane convex. Snorts he tips fasten it. Fallow walls plasticity that would cover her too. �I can eagerly see sheer wood. The blade itself lips & gutters by the magazine. �Mellowing beauteous crackers. I offer sweets. That form of towel. �Even can horses are dead inside me. �Nor is it Mongolian downs that is c a s tiga tion. Darkened green men onto whose mechanical window. �I stand shod within the boy. Unified dolls bing-bong freely & discount spherical merchandise. �Night becomes a braid. Worn & elaborate coitus. �Or burst of grass intending her mirroring fell. �Each prune is a monument such as captivity is a monument. �Connubial mines such & such. Long salubrious wait asking why the jillion. �Its fleece repellent & sadness. Like a hood leaps to me. �Feeling the mule tighten. Finite arms placed squarely on the chair. �Placate me. Stroke my hair. I can flounder from that cookoo. �Fixed to her skin. Help me understand. �A amount of people. His brink my brink. & The candle is open. �Whose hairs become my goblet. Once I pray it is gone. �My song my component. The tonsure violence concurs. �Such hands are travesties. Which the woodcock. Only my tirelessly calling to her. �Rocking calling & the pulpit. �Its embryo down. Her strand is there. Patted. Patted. Hence from herself. �Whose vendetta is voices. �Two positions I acknowledge. Remote from my terror my Christ was nothing. �Figure my role. Rabid & approximate. How he stands essentially defeated. �Utter the toy. Shatter & replay it. Which was elastic doll babies. �Prettily the settee hunts your lips. Place it on my thigh. �Methodology & me. Beside myself. �Omnivorous & withheld from me. Her talons are a mood in my withdrawing body. �COPS Only to play wet. Less so honey �Unlike my flowers they are mine. They stick to me & are wholly like me. �Equivocal in this sense. A saucer. saucer. A �The potty the maker even the harrowing blossoms. �My tilt blacker this time. Stillball. The attacker comes parroting. �Who are two. My beauty on two. �Many forks have broken. They have kissed. �The wasp will play happily. �Indeed her beauty is gone. The thread is awkward resting on my ankle. �Its mandible done. Mixed with this state of mind. �In two through our wave. My dharma gri ppi ng. Being instead the same. �We pass candles. Find my mass surlily surlily. �Lay by me a hundred jellos. A sound is watched alone. In essence alone. �Blade of fork thus denied its own violet teams. �Thi s Li ttle Di nosaur c hapbook wa s printed in early 1988 in an edition of 250 copies, 25 of which are numbered and signed by the author. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cops Description An account of the resource This Little Dinosaur chapbook was printed in early 1988 in an edition of 250 copies, 25 of which are numbered and signed by the author. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1988 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_026 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 46 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/07cf9d68caa4df9016ec3f29ec19e23c.pdf d3dbbe5994f94866c406120cabde97e4 PDF Text Text ALSO BY GAIL SHER: From another point of view the woman seems to be resting, Trike Press, 1981 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem, Square Zero Editions, 1982 Rouge to beak having me, Moving Letters Press, 1983 �"JJ... BROKE AIDE �© 1985 by Gail Sher Parts of this book have been printed in Tramen and Credences. This project is in part supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., a federal agency, and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sher, Gail, 1942Broke aide. I. Title. PS3569.H39792B7 1985 ISBN 0-930901-35-3 ISBN 0-930901-36-3 (pbk.) 813'.54 85-4702 ���~CONTENTS: Retablo . . . . . . . 9 Broke Aide . . . . . 5 3 ���Retablos are ''paintings made on sheets of tin to be nailed up in church as thank-offerings after a miraculous recovery from accident or disaster. They are usually in three parts. At the top is the figure of the saint, the saviour or the virgin . ... In the middle is a graphic and often gory description of the disaster or affliction. At the base is the written inscription expressing gratitude and recounting details of the incident." Mulvey and Wollen, p.19. �~I. Aware of this as a social act which the presence of another person demands. Useful equals funny within this code. What is left in the effete aspires inward. The drawing motion of a straw against some bottom liquid. Its keel is obstreperous. Walking is uncomfortable as the air turns cold. Talking about plants his tone is buoyant as if the relation were a distant one. Another time they climb a hill the foliage angling stubbornly. \iVhat was fake held apart loosely. The room is without lights and without background for this encounter. She opened the gate and carefully closed it so that several minutes passed. It was just a memory, the desolation a past occurrence involving her. Thus she watched carefully noticing the concrete and the marbled patterns that the sun made on it. �12 BROKE AIDE A radio from another room having something circumscribed allows the same desolate s-pace. A voice begins and lessens in what circulates through this. Lacks identity like boiling water lacks identity. �13 RETABLO * She sets them on a seat and begins to undress. Stacking her clothes in impeccable stacks which is nonsense she thinks aligning her instincts against this. I relax and feel time as somehow enlarged particles. A purchase takes place sonically. It 1s wet, happening inside. �14 BROKE AIDE Each thing is worn and torn, spins from thing to thing, not in reference to something else or modified by something else, but distinct and impartial. (Whose release is porous otherwise). Tom's shirt fades and his jeans fit snug around his slightly enlarged thighs. Small tufts of hair grow along his lower spine. His legs move unselfconsciously in the outturned manner of a boy. �15 No one belongs to the portion opposite where I sleep (which will not alter afterwards). We descend the stairs and place our trays on the metal bars. RETABLO The cat stills. I walk quickly with no particular plan. The nails on the animal exist outside himself. Fingering air (refreshing territorially). Tom feels the air as he sits at his desk. �16 BROKE AIDE His leg kicks back and forth. I rock back and forth. I use my neck and the muscles in my neck to tilt them slightly. Holding her arm close to her chest she touches her face lightly. A taxi driver laughs. �RETABLO 17 My wipers fail to fuse cleanly with the glass and dust is smeared opaquely. A shallow arc which intensifies, then gradually clears off. Segments of speed modify what otherwise is indifference (since hurrying implies feeling). Hard-gloss actions replace any tendency to reciprocate. �18 BROKE AIDE As if this is a makeshift person. Some person grown without willingness or identity. Thus very new. (Lack of hair or other touching debility.) �RETABLO 19 The animal is wild with a frilly walk. Its legs go in passages. Tom walks quickly (so that there is not something apart from this). A woman's body is young (clearly a still pain). �20 BROKE AIDE Hips express a clear perception. To be bound is his ability wherefore the interior is the same. He will urinate and feel the precision of this missing from his life. Tom stays motionless while a woman showers for a long time. The event of the water drills through his shallow life. Tom finds his clothes and puts them on quickly. AI grows flowers. �RETABLO 21 We walk behind things, boxes and trucks, hurdled and exotic beaten here. AI touches her sweater. The little hairs coagulate. A woman labors pleasantly (farms on a summer evening). Falling while alone, no one passes to help. A woman moves instinctively through small familiar rooms. Someone will touch her (dressed and perfumed) touches (an old person) so that she hurries around. A vivid woman. �22 BROKE AIDE Al sees a flower (a stray piece of paper blown in the grass). She hurries to her car. Al 's neighbor is old. I raise tulips fervently (in back) an appendage for the old woman. �RETABLO 23 Tom might see a restaurant while he is alone (putting himself through the heavy door) into some old motion again. (His body dries while others leave the city.) Small portions of cheap food reading at the same time. At a restaurant he is small, a single cheap man. �24 BROKE AIDE A time of threat sucking toward a center. Things spread out to contain nothing. I make coffee which Tom drinks. Seated on the floor he will browse (empty seeming). A waitress might notice him seated at a bar. So that a medium is reached, a center whereby nothing is detracted from this. Tom puts his hand in his back hip pocket (cognizant of this). �RETABLO 25 Many people are on the floor sleeping and talking whom I now find an impediment. I sleep and discover them milling around. Gaze (convulsively) spreading the food so that they touch sometimes. She lifts her eyes to see them touching. Cramps suddenly lifted attention. A mind aroused (as in a chain). Movements take place by those. �26 BROKE AIDE We swim at night which is photographed. Aspects of knees where I would be in white. Who tries savvy (mauling amounts) digging my nails into the center. �~II. Tom enters a room (is a fraud room). Braces (fraudulently) a scrap of thought. (A merge of ears seated with the proud man.) (Steadies) the table as he talks to AI. A breath is taken gladly. (Islets) smart so as a whole (fresh) body. �28 BROKE AIDE Which has a raucous flavor. Barbaric colors fan a growth. (Lame) hairstyles amounts to her. (Dummy person seated on the bed edge.) A priest appears (cocky). I sit quietly though I see it at the same time. (Time plummets basally into the pillow.) Will synchronize my body. An old man dies (slants) from his ashes (humorously). �29 (Cites) from (my) figure central slack (memory). RETABLO Hides her (fathers) (provosts) her. Familial conventions burrow from ourselves. A bearing from a pet (having planned oneself) in the element of mother laps. Five listen up to my darling words. Inverted conjures what is heroic phenomena. Caveats glare straight up in her seat (whose pegs turn colors). �BROKE AIDE 30 Rubbings of the girl (who kneels steadily). Navigates as this job whets. Sees .AI as an object. Dashing to him. Long-shot cows (test-feed or remember to feed) dabbles in a lake (snorting around). �RETABLO 31 Precedents are flat. A woman (vacillates) having a vertical nature otherwise. Al sees her own faults. Al greets Tom. Bodies pile before her sight. Which is (her) longing. AI rides along fuselage of (old) events (balloons) hang on. �32 BROKE AIDE Depicts a costume is (minute) umbilical ribbons. Sable strokes (a tiny giving) above the head. (Puffs) across the earth. A house gives way to (coffin) birds. (Blue) walls a false birth. �33 Is childish fun to clean the man. A fat man paints. A (tender) man (filthy) and plentiful. RETABLO Switching to a taunt (a stool) outside the class (lovebirds). Is a smart act. (The tawdry leg is booted now.) Fecund attention (gushing) nourishment. �34 BROKE AIDE Is something ridden (hopeless). I suck my fingers looking (abashed) and (vain) among the statues. To soap the moon (sugar games) to (flirt) with the clay man. My bed has skeletons (unison) owls (gala) auction. Frenzy-eyed (twigs) what I draw from birth. �35 Bricks would have a lace chest. What my spine does laying like a (cubicle). RETABLO Spangled pain cinches where it hurts. A sister goes out which is (my) being (my bed) stand. Easels straddle its broken form. One joke cab a (nicknamed) being has character in the picture. �36 BROKE AIDE As if I have my own trajectory. Transmutes a limit of quiet. Votive movements (dormant) is a false line of vision. Wetting and afraid (a source of quarrel) over the years. One (coins) hope. I live out her gismo. �RETABLO 37 Is (her) way. She calls him down in a boyish voice. Perched (casually) to hop down. Is without dependence which is probationary (thus pushed off). Like a burning thing. A man's skin (likewise) molded sloppily. �38 BROKE AIDE Truculent (slimy) embossed from (my) origin. A mind knob fusing (since she was fetching). Frying colors before her. A body like (a moth) can swim entire hedges. A Chinese child stretches her eyes. Swoops finding (this) shard. �RETABLO 39 Eyes mulch words. A border begins from within constriction. Hustles words from many nimble word (mannequins). Slogans hide perimeters. Which defaces me to the younger girl. �40 BROKE AIDE A child lay back thus (enshrined) satisfactorily. Veins of rotundity laughs. Death from feet is cardboard crowns. Visceral with the (mantis) person. A clown would maim me. (A woman smokes outside). Bullies its way up the bowl. To spy from the ring a certain readability. Is (one) way to mimic this. �RETABLO 41 Al presides over the corpse. To so enfeeble my dolls. (AI washes them sweetly). Of voluptuous color (signified eyes) ·which stratify a distant person. Hairs beneath me float (cropped) behind the man (seated). Gnarled embryo and is a (cupped) man. I am seated in my dress. Slices of me (gullies). A prickly man (lives) in me (stabbing) departure. �42 BROKE AIDE Is her own particular withering. I lay sprawled in the eaglet's poise. Kicking in its modest dress. Men are fake Al feels. Toes are plumage. Ankles stalking water has an ''I do'' sense. (Whose perceptive is without hindsight.) Tom's face (pocked) climbs toward that (shed) guide. Questions remake masks as though a softness is behind them. Familial is thus a category (plumbed) to lie unforgettably. A checkered coat slings over his arm. A woman floats (before which) a pet is (captured). �~III. I water quietly. (Reins) our lost self. Pulls us two which (coo) black. She 1s (a) double. (Is) a monogamous past (an alert) connection. The child sucks (internally) wearing white for a few bites. �44 BROKE AIDE Snickers at the story. A child hears what he remembers (laughing) casually. Is taken something sagacious (which is) karma. A float of person (sneaking) food. A sandbox could be (messy) (fury). (Is) bitten carefully (scrubbing) a (path) estuary. �RETABLO 45 Violates one necessity therefore. A woman (dreams) retelling the dream. Another woman is fat (aquatic amongst the stones). (Cleats) (on the run) eating. Family (mines) pawn (the milk she drinks from girlhood on) . �46 BROKE AIDE Like a brimming thing. Allistens to Tom. Tom appears alert. Tilting his body around the machine Tom's hair mats. His (cheeks) seem soft. Tom smokes or today will not (idly). �RETABLO 47 Distends from (my) teepee (cool) air (broth). To slit him off I paint (engines). Small electric cuts. (Pronto) to spend and rid herself. Freezes my touch which I remember in the car. Tom is red (fucks) red (beams) which I recall yielding gladly. �48 BROKE AIDE * Opening itself casually. Al (stares) at the stomach of the man. He strokes his watch (arcane stubbles) onto one p1ece. Whose guts sprout veins. Leaves sprout thick (rubbery ) visions. (Meatless) (bent) arms thinking of the marriage. �RETABLO 49 Tom exists for minutes. (Cows) from the dead as we ease the bridge. Tom parades beaches (gropes) so that she is (cheese) too. A large man arches tenderly. Glitters on the edges (sucking) the boy. Which also has (pork) knowing mountains by the inside. �BROKE AIDE 50 Fleet precautions temper form. Its lack belongs (areas) tumbling mentally (represents) flowers. A human drops (flags) (colors) that are neutrally made. Tom is kind suddenly (evolves) what (breast) is here. Tom would call suddenly. (Immersion) cuts out slabs of him waiting quietly. �RETABLO 51 ----------------------------------- Enchants (becomes) macrocosms. (Presents) a rush (across) the street. Tom drinks. AI (values) food. Both auctions (shimmy). To order something quickly. AI is in a hurry (throws down change). Later it's a (real) quality. (Numb) air inserted by choice. �52 BROKE AIDE Time replaces energy because he is now hollow. Gasps is such (apparently) freedom. A tomb within his throat. Word (earths) left with little relaxation. A girth (of course) without sex. Years flow by. Tom repeats laughing. Al remembers masks (forgets) her (pudgy) body size. ���Militant pussy beck and. Is a way of avoiding surprise. A whole mother fucker (ancient pellets) get. Some rook huh. Some tootsie rook wallowing against a hidden roof. If I let go I might fall in (said) inexplicably dabbling in this (juice) fort. Telling me (sky). Come on over (cutsie). A little dimpled sheet which would have him love him. I say what love (but) he repeats my name blankly. A pedigree of shame snuggling inside. Backstage (cows) sits gracefully. I call significantly to the runner-up. �BROKE AIDE 56 Tom greets me after an absence. He raises my chin asking how I am today. Motion desists (apt) or alone. (Tom) comes afterwards. Tom personally mocks me. A devil crutch as we (clutch) ourselves. Oh the poultry (coughs) out back is a (symbol) (tank) for my feeble anger. �BROKE AIDE 57 Al can feel it build. A discrepancy (flocked) dear. The nurse brings me tea saying we'll do this together. Vicious lays me laying to its high leg. A personal leg lounging near thick windows. ·whose forceps cuddle the (late) hand. Something is asked. (Al says this). �BROKE AIDE 58 A shaft jolt (see). Argot (bones) my lily being. \Ve two are holes. (It is so bare). Gimmie my crucifix. �59 Is the bone of heart pumping. It pumps and hacks as Al pulls back. Al reasons to herself. Blinds are drawn and Al (thinks). BROKE AIDE A man lowers his voice speaking to AI quietly. Long ago I danced which I believe. I am asleep (the tines of which deplete myself). �60 BROKE AIDE Creates a multiplication. (This is factual.) Tom beams over my shoulder. Tom's intimate sight demands a (gameless) Al. Modes of Al squeeze (Al) out to drain the scent of honeyed-words. Dummies (facts) while I (breathe) a plain thing. I am reminded to do a thing (a correct thing) to bring me death. Into exclusive heat now (cut) heat as if the cubes were (frozen) me. Her breasts are high. Rags encircle their strength. �BROKE AIDE 61 Slogans leave me nothing. So much hush. So withered and the fullest (she) puffs me. So that down I go. (Exculpate my two-timing.) The length of Tom shields a steep shelf. �62 BROKE AIDE This is a parable. Having it build over a period of time. A youngster's anatomy (directly attracts) her (now in the mood). Cuts me to its own plod hum. Some mine. Some fake guile like my one or two protrusions. Which she pledges to him. The geyser fonts (she). I cannot taste an entire education. �BROKE AIDE 63 (As to me seeing) which is fetal. The pose cools. The lamb parts about myself. The sky parts which I see clearly. Fractures grip (hands) alongside the rebellion (so that) globes hold hands. I carve the tree front. A manner is a plea. Al pleas (scrapple) like an octopus pleas night (in the paddies). Irrigates (night) to swim a tiny channel. �64 BROKE AIDE A lady is twelve around the (bus) forest. Glass grows tall. A ringing sound achieves our peace. Is an arcade. (Deepens the contraption.) AI primps (is a jiffy) primp a (box) zone to toss us forward. �BROKE AIDE 65 A man smiles (leans) toward AI (the despot). Al's coat is heavy (fondled) in the blazing heat. Grabs Al's hand catching AI off guard. A hand beneath her slips (about) bottles. �66 BROKE AIDE AI grins. (Ransacked) (is) perfect union deary. A bird is glass and (handles) pain. Charm is hotter cheat (here he holds her back). Tom sprints warmly sage (warmly) in the hanging thing. A buffalo (cloth) hands. Age (repeats) the animal. �67 Comfort eats pain hinging on the bigger edge. Hops from it like the sweet girl she is. BROKE AIDE AI inches off the chair. Ripped across the hair or slipping his towel between my paths. I am aroused and look about intuitively. I use my might to push this thing. Hobble a (floated) pain. (Razzmatazz) beholding how the minister will (also) watch. �BROKE AIDE 68 Tom lies on his belly. Squirrels are near a river and Tom lies on leaves which are (slow) leaves. AI lies back (listens) attentively finalized already (within two stones). Leaves climax as we speak. AI gives in. A pig grows moody (this thought is in her mind) . Words grace my long white thing. (My face) is in the sun. The gimmick of my (cross) too (like his friend says). �69 Tom leans over my lingering arm. (Inscribes) (strands) of me. BROKE AIDE Stoic charge (yes). Persons come with crooked heads or (lingering) bodies. Bosoms rent this paisley (touch) elbows (intestines) barrage (said to attack). What I am common. Corrects the slice of (me). The hiatus. He slips his arm around me gently. (Swoop) I am pliable (plying) fur birds. The older joke is open now the rook sets. �70 BROKE AIDE Like I smear cream or (jelly) on the mole. Its mark (pocks) frosting (marks) pricked in little toothpick hearts. Hobnobs (those of us). Boys shriek from lower in the riverbed. Al lies back. Golden nails draw them dogs over the carpet Al 's (ennui) is. �BROKE AIDE 71 Geese come toward (AI snoozes peacefully). A man prefers (a man). AI licks him inside out pretending she is human too. Bike men fly me (ad hoc). Touching the rind. A JaW forsakes her soft center. Corks the bearable part. I am pants (sharp) and too afraid of my own home. �BROKE AIDE * Tom sits quietly. I park near his house. He chooses a place (near his house) between my car and his house. I make myself comfortable. Used with life a door leads off. Tom mows grass lar ge (blades) of silky (tinder) companionship. He sits across the table from me. This busy man (mows) the dishes gradually achieviTltr, (her) sense of friendliness. �73 Al reads fast. (Iffy) the projection of a man around thirty-five. Not Tom. BROKE AIDE Seated in a v suspends her arm which is a (heavy) snow-puffed jacket. Knickers is huffy in its jasmine scent. Her earring (stars) out of its body. (Mine is in a cast.) Al remembers her brother Tom's (punctually) in a former life. �74 Is some cold station. BROKE AIDE Buckled off me. A time for these after we play a (deep) robbery. Called upon honey. Sheer back zones garrulous or fake as she crouches near the bathroom chute. Tinsel zones contract (cranes) upward. Oh I am so curious to say hello openly. Like a handshake my (deceiving) posture. Gawky (dates) suggest our poise. Keynote minds (peak) over cupboards (play me out) one step further. �BROKE AIDE 75 Absolves Al like the boy who uses a quarter. Vascular (tits) if withheld again and again. She is (my) ghost sent out by (me) to leisure Tom. (If only I could part the feathers lining my pillow back home.) �BROKE AIDE 76 Tom's hygiene is busier. Fur comes out (patois). (The two sing together.) Humps the pony. One earring falls. Al is silent. A woman is busy and signals she is ready for Tom. Roams out (pistol) cattle while Al's body is flat on top. H er arms are canes. (The bed has bars.) Opens Al softly (cuing) (amazed) that she is in a car. �BROKE AIDE A clod hungers drine) (Tom's) meals. Penelope placebo down on 77 effervescent Tom's (alexanplace. Hustling (Odysseus) will sew forever dripping (her) canvas. Whose posture is erect. Al studies the painting. Filigree whips triumvirate (place) each to be what my eye shapes. I slap (eyes) noticing a humble man studying (sugar). (A head draped over the marrow car.) There is no give (no revelation) beyond what Al divines herself. ��The text of this book was linotyped in 11 pt. Devinne by Mollohan Typesetting in West Warwick, R.I. Design and cover by Keith W aldrop. Printed on Warren's Olde Style by Rosmarie Waldrop and smyth-sewn by New Hampshire Bindery in Concord. There a1·e 1000 copies, of which 50 are cloth-bound and signed. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broke aide Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Burning Deck State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1985 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_025 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Retablo Broke Aide Extent The size or duration of the resource. 79 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/7a10ede8d70211f5113264d5fbcf574c.pdf ae06c89d44ca69b1688a0ac7e4af96b3 PDF Text Text (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem ��(As) on things which ( headpiece) touches the Moslem e cai/ Sher SQUARE ZERO EDITIONS Chapbook Series No. One �Copyright 1982 by Gail Sher Published by Intersection, 756 Union Street, SF, Ca 94133 ��(As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem In who claim to hold (to) be form ( dearest) �Or even some grabbing to brace (to) be sectional protecting jacket Saw (too) to cling here chessmen �Red air chews yes This queer bare mouth Ignites the mother beak Or man on the dais as its mother stroked it �Mime is first Part mint part internal march quantity No guy Nor flaps of voice to part this �So tentacles or them Retreat itself Chant wrought side Is lewd or solicits lewd �The grit or hear Which comes student Vows & pick here Whereas derives stallion inside Exact were larvae also �Eat line green on love The jut will hoarse Christ eventually Renunciant line excepts A dent from month Hand & mung born dark �Dram nun To opens in a lower room Brittleness high love Bring the pull strains graced which vesicle �Like hills leave to various hills This time the clasp food Or anniversary of a polite act Being a toy building from one kiln �Hex these lake The crock the shepherd on her own children thankfully The woolly flesh Or part which stampedes even music basically �And elegance its tenancy Doer logs ferrying cells A rung or yelling underneath the honey Tensile lowing most young Joins others I the unguent I Tubers & iron even to prepare this �This elliptical weaning or long spaying sound Wheels all right this dark math earth Or widow's phone As hover from the elbows is something growing �Bittenness as monk Pat on this Taking one ignite Girl and no �Bond to gum Intense from now The hoist pin Dawns or parson ���� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Square Zero Editions Intersection State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1982 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_024 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 20 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/0ac2b583c238299cd5c12c1c573b0af9.pdf afa260f602259bf9082be5c7582e0672 PDF Text Text �~,.~:_·;/' ··tr::; :· 0 , '- ..;~j, .·, . -~:;\~) . ...-~' •.: ~ �Soal'in9 Col,\rlin9 Matin9 €g9-Layin9 t-latchin9 (as lat"Va) Pl,\patin9 6-ne"9in9 (as bwtte..fly) Baskin9 Nectar-in9 Swvivin9 Wea#\el' P,-edatol'S t-li.u'l'\al'\S Mi9.-atin9 Roostin9 Ove,-winte.-in9 �p I,\ 9 I 9 V\ d 9 9 a 2 9 9 d 0 w z 4 V\ �no two! no five! in the it'is-colo,-.ed 5 clo[.,\ds �bi9 blt,\e bt,\tte.,.fly past my eyes aV\d to sea 6 �poof. yovu,• lacy path ovel"- the vast mov11'\tail'lface l"-ockslide 7 �ff"isky lady at"ol.,\nd th.e cow acf"oss 8 th.e f"ib9f"ass �tipplin9 with dew painted lad}:' in the t.mdel'"stot"}:' 1S half-li9ht 9 �mona.,.cl,,: spea.,.in9 the s1,m as it sets on the pylons 10 �scal'41et wiV\9s in the bl-4eWiV\9 stol'4m sc1Attle by the lek 11 �aftet" the chase Cl>"t"ested by a flowet" il'l the Vet"daV\t 91.,dch 12 �behind the sh.,.~bs at the field's vel"9e ca~9ht 13 by the fief"}:_' s~Y\ �balanced on a s1..mflowe,.. h.e,.. win9s - 9140W 91,det 14 encased in h.is - �matiV19 over she drops dark 15 to the 9ro~V1d aV\d soft with loam �stin9il'\9 nettle leaf , 9lt-\ed CAnde~l'\eath he~ small 16 pile ofe99s �CvH'led beneath hel" abdomen cal"essed 17 a bl,\d - b}'.' the lowel"in9 Sv\n �swollen depositing sfreambed: "'et' e99 on its cavet'no1,1s 18 bank �9l"avid l'l}'.'mph. 9l"aspil'l9 a leaf with. yo1,w claw-like 19 toes �SL-11•veyiV19a stem of hai...-s its pk1mp p...-ickly body atop 20 a c...-eamy e99-case �V\ibbliV\9the blade chewiV\9 1 excl"etiV\9 whol"ls of leaves 21 �wa1-1deJ-<iV\9 i"1staJ-< 01-1the hi9hway's dl,\sky shol,\lde.,. pal,\sed 22 �o catel'pillal' ... in yot.,\I' wake a sw,np 23 of leaves �a slivei,<of bal"k ✓1t, .' ) I \__ ../ . .. . \,'\\;t.•, ~.' ·-·-:7 24 ·. . • ; :~--- �moV\al"'ch pL-\pa ... swaddled dotted 25 iV'I9l"'eeV1 with 9old �iridescent checker yol,\r prenatal etched 26 profile evermore deeply .. , darkly , . , �skiff of snow: on the ba.,..bed wit"e a pu.pa blows 27 �a monarch p1,1pa cracks tin}::' ichne1,1mon scramble 28 into wasps s1,1nli9ht - �in win9s Cl 9ossamel'4 sha~ of 29 �wavin9 lon9 le9s dl"-a99in9 itself t!vol.,,\9h the widenin9 in the pl"-e-dawn 30 li9ht split �ft-<om freelimb little to violet ima9o's almost-somet-<Sal,\lt 31 �chestl"\tAt wil"\9s wa,..mi"'9 them in the mot'nin9 32 S!.,\I'\ �hi9h noon lime-w•een W\l,\d-pl,\ddle 33 Sl,\lphl,\l"-S in the canyon dl,\st �an al"ctic win9s basks tilted towal"d the salmon-pink 34 - sk}'.' �the bo}'.' dozes pel"'ched OVI his a l"'ed admil"'al 35 , , , B}'.' l"'od �h.ol"se-mint l"ipe ... a din of silvel"spots in th.e noontime 36 h.l,\sh. �laV\diV\9 OV\ a spew• of l"'L,\sh beV\diV\9 the l"'L,\shyol,\I"' 37 l"'attlil'\9 wil'\9s �sa+yi-<: }:'OL-li-< dai-<ts ai-<0L-1nd the 38 stand of TL-1i-<k's cap �little sV\o~t beyoVld the jetty flaVlked by flowe.,..s 39 �91.,\st of wind - a hair-sfreak tips on its maple leaf per-ch 40 �sliced by the s9v1all wil'"l9s littel" the di....+y sal'\d 41 �bends the 1,o·nbel the 42 f..itilla,....ybelow �a~ei-< the stoi-<m jinkin9 abov\t the leewai-<d flank 43 of the dv\ne �h.ovel"il'\9 al"o1md th.e bloodl"oot fl"esh. billmal"k aCl"OSS h.el" Wil'\9 44 - �reeking of the sea f aci n9 the sea fat white 45 9rL,\b in its beak �ea9let t"ippin9 the soldiet" ft"ee ft"om the asphalt 46 �spittin9 ol,\t the Ql,\een the yellow shrill 47 call bird's �ghostly wings al'\ or-al'\ge-black against 48 heap the c1,,1v-b �slipping oV\ the scree her WiV\9s smeared my fiV\9ers powdery 49 �still dl-4inkin9 the phlox beneath W\}'.' a swallowtail 50 net , �Al.,\ 9 1.,\stmooV\ ovel"'flowiV\9 with 51 the jal"' its wil"'e-mesh mol.,\th �so~ly scl,\ddiV\9 a 9a99le clol,\ds . of si9htseel"s poiV\ts at the l"oViV\9 flock 52 �f.,..om the P"'ow of the fe"'"'Y watchiV19 them spiVI eve.,.. faste.,.. ove.,.. the bay 53 �flat pi"'k saff~ol'\ sea: Wil'\9s fltA.tte~ ove~ the p~aWI'\ boat 54 �cold snap: ridin9 a tailwind a male skipper 55 �win+e~ Sl.-\1'1 pale win9s fll.-\tte~ abol.-\t the woodpile 56 �followil'\9 the d.-.ift- ice 9.-.azil'\9 the coast, pallid 57 , , ove.-.wi.,..+e.-.i.,..9 bll.,\e �whirling with the tide in the shallow's flattened 58 stt,\bble �twili9ht ... fast asleep iV\ the silver 59 birch �Sl'\OW melts the fiv- free ... sa9s fv-om the sleepi"'9 60 flock �bel'dl'\d the stol'4m-Wil'\dow latticed dal'\9lil'\9 61 with ice , , , thl'4eadbal'4e wil'\9s �win+e.,.'s end: CL-ll"led alon9 t~e window's its b ...ittle body 62 led9e �l,,\V\der ice l,,\V\der sV10W a 9racile 63 wiV19 �Night Crane Press, 700 Heinz Avenue, Suite 310, Berkeley, California 94710 © 1998 Night Crane Press DESIGNED BY LORY POULSON ANO SUSAN GLUCK � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saffron wings Description An account of the resource Designed by Lory Poulson and Susan Gluck Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1998 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_023 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 64 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/a5de9757cd2208c683bc9281bb79357d.pdf 2efbdad492a9399768d7481a1a37d1fc PDF Text Text one bug one mouth snap! �A Year in the Life of a Turtle POEM SEQUENCE BY Gail Sher �CONTENTS Spring I Summer 38 Autumn 51 Winter 76 �SPRING �the swamp - its musty smell - airs in the crisp March wind 2 �alders the above curly­ cry cues your of tailing mist 3 �absorbing the rain the quagmire sleeps ... steeps in the morning sun 4 �between the cries of a black-crowned night heron - the sound of unseen birds 5 �burning off the morning haze a sunbeam spots the tip of her nostrils 6 �beneath a layer of leaves in the pale light her plastron still 7 �the sun shifts she shifts - then dives into the water 8 �spring-green leaf-tips erase the sky 9 �gilded yellow bars also gleaming in twilit waters a male's eyes �locking forelegs and necks the pair counter-clockwise 11 �silent night stars swim a black and blue ocean 12 �silence but for two shells grinding together in the dusk I] �afterwards what's left of her tears 1 dark wet mud [Turtles sometimes shed tears as they lay their eggs.] 14 �tamping her nest she lumbers away laden with dirt 15 �stalking down the slope she vanishes in your shadows ... softly blowing bluestem 16 �one pink-white egg nestled in the earth ... the moon �starless sky nosing the flask-shaped chamber Ave flashes of white 18 �groping . missing a black-masked hunter rakes the twilight 19 �fondling for a moment the morning sun her barren nest 20 �carnage over tiny bits of sun-dried shells wind and weather-beaten 21 �shrouded in fog a tiny dinosaur inches toward dawn 22 �across her nest's sandy ridge dragging her spiked inch-long tail 23 �from broken shell to clump of bluestem ... making a dash for it 24 �kerplunck scurrying through the grass then plopping in the water 25 �morning sun dozing on a mat of reeds a baby snapper �spinning orange and yellow through the sunny pool. .. little cooter. your spots 27 �on a tuft of moss near a flowering cranberry eggtooth intact ... 28 �more strikes and afterwards ... swirling pondweed 29 �foraging the lagoon a hatchling choked by weeds 30 �the shadow moves the yearling ... freezes ]I �under a pine and mounds of pine-needles another mound 32 - �one bug one mouth snap! 33 �smack of a jaw slap of a tail ... silence 34 �with whiplash speed plowing through the swamp lily pads stuck to his dome 35 �hunt over ... a water lily bobs in the waves 36 �upside down caked with mud ...a tortoise's sun-bleached bones 37 ��high and still on the milky horizon summer clouds 39 �steamy morning lulling me to sleep - their rubbery croak 40 tree frogs - �the afternoon stroked by soft summery light 41 purrs �night falls lying on a bed of leaves the moon 42 �hot windless day even the song-sparrow's is deserted 43 nest �a puff of cloud ... its trailing edge in the quiescent sky 44 �the heron stands ... bakes in the hard dry air 45 �circling the cove immense blue wings stir the stagnant ether �day in. day out - bull frogs and the echo of bull frogs 47 �night, dawn, noon, dusk ... will they ever stop �slapping them. grabbing them. swiping them out of my hair 49 �landing on a spear of rush bending the rush your rattling wings 50 �AUTUMN �softly on a barely-detectable a whiff of autumn 52 north wind �lowering sun: a few red leaves blaze in the pale grass 53 �from blade to blade picking seeds from the toppled reedgrass 54 �clear blue sky warm winds crook the deeply-yellow 55 flower heads �drizzly day, darts and wiggles in the waterweed 56 �a kingfisher's through call the shallow rain - riverbed deserted 57 �no chirps no twitters just rain 58 �oncoming storm thunderous ghosts patrol the horizon 59 �thunder in one haywire jolt the forest's silhouette 60 �one bolt searing the landscape white �thunderstorm rainwater - over its sound - seeping into the earth �thunderheads occlude the sky at dawn, at dusk ... the moon's absent face 63 �scorching a no-longer-summer summer heat landscape - �hot restless wind treading it with your fairy wings 65 �she cocks her head algae wave in the sunny floodwater 66 �hot-purple bellies sinewy stems undulating in the heat �little water. no rain one by one exiting the marsh 68 �without its yellow flowers bladderwort - deflated - splattered with mud 69 �fingering the parched riverbed trickles ... then rivulets ... �even as you screech your imminent silence 71 �your mournful call crosses my mind this wet cold morning 72 �now after they're gone ... their ceaseless cries 73 �winging low over a field whose springtime bluets are gone 74 �frogs wait, birds wait. snakes wait... the season shifts 75 �WINTER �pine needles laced with snow between their clusters your departing V 77 �cold air sinks - the hollows a black network of bare elm �roiling, tumbling, riding the winter wind witch grass 79 �darker colder each day arcing lower 80 �more than wind more than cold rustles through the stiffening reeds 81 �dusk a lone Canada goose vanishes in the leatherleaf �brown leaves shrivel pock-marked fail to ripen in the weak October sun 83 fruit �not hawks but wind the branchless saplings dead �mucky river and you - eyes closed tight - lodging among the roots 85 �her breath stops the frozen moor covered with night 86 �winds howl snow mounts the wintry thicket ...lifeless �under ice, under mud deaf to the whistling winter birds 88 �Published by Night Crane Press. c/o Gail Sher, 700 Heinz Avenue, Suite 310, Berkeley, CA 94710 © 1997 Gail Sher Design and illustration by Lory Poulson The author wishes to acknowledge David M. Carroll's exquisitely delicate The Year of the Turtle (published by Camden House, Vermont, 1991) which informed and inspired these haiku-like poems. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource One bug, one mouth, snap! Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. A year in the life of a turtle Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1997 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_022 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Spring Summer Autumn Winter Extent The size or duration of the resource. 93 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng haiku-like poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/74fd948748dec5187aa8ad7cfdf1e30b.pdf 158a42d9e5376af7dc498e0c2a702f19 PDF Text Text Once There Was Grass �also by gail sher Prose The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984 Poetry redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �Once There Was Grass Gail Sher Q night crane press 2004 �Copyright 2004, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press, 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 Cover art: Gail Sher No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN: 0-9726115-3-3 �For Brendan ��Once there was grass Once there was grass. Once there was corn country. Yellow stalks wind-driven and hungry. I thought locusts destroyed all that. Chives, gourd-leaves, cucumbers covered the ground. Tender grass. Soul-surfing grass. The young owl’s whooooooo. I had a pet tortoise (to whom I fed lettuce). Mama mama. Cry for me. Cry for my daughter and her daughters. The grasshoppers came. Their sound, hair-splitting. Why? Since music is made. I don’t see the point. 1 �Brushing bottoms. Of what underneath? Lavender’s hoary, huh, he said. Scrawny purple mops. Crude or you might say obscene the way they flopped, flip-flopped, flip-flopped. I don’t think I’ll be early, she’d moaned, hiking her jersey high above her thighs. So when the lily . . . I mean full blown white popped out . . . The world is self-correcting, said the man in the hat. He’d crossed one blue-jeaned leg over another. A rank, lowering of the air followed his shift of position. The woman about to give birth wanted candles. “Can I have five?” she’d asked. So what’s internal? Her horse. (She’d said it tenderly.) The mouse, the earth, the lake where she began. Well, the farmer had in mind to potty train the child, but his wife . . . it was strange. 2 �She was four (the kid). She couldn’t talk and she wore diapers. The mother’d say, “Hi doll!” but you knew . . . I mean, who wants to be around a smelly little girl? “It’s uncomfortable for everyone,” remarked a distant relative. Wiping the ass of her daughter, smearing the shit, who knows, playing in it. She had a plug in her heart (the child). To keep her blood pressure down. She had a hole in her heart which the lungs rushed to fill. The plug plugged it (sort of). Anemia’s like that. Blood leaks out. But they couldn’t find it. “Where’s the leak?” the doctors said. “I was holding him on my finger — all of a sudden he keeled over.” 3 �Husky sun Husky sun. (Its gabardine sleeve.) “My little puppy!” The pit bull growled. “Mommy! Mommy! Why is that baby all crumpled up?” The infant (in a bulb) had been placed on the grass. Sunflowers waved and it grinned. The funny thing was the glass. It lounged, like a flower, mostly head, absorbing the noon’s rays. Odd. I felt it was up to me (the heart-to-heart resuscitation). But the newborn’d responded, gurgling and laughing. EEEEEEEEeeeeeeeooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww squealed her next door chums, dribbling water across the path. So glee. Delight. (The memory of a word.) Let’s pretend you’re a bear. You’re sick and I bring you milk. (She giggled.) Or let’s pretend you’re a bird and I bring you worms. “Here little one. Open your mouth.” 4 �Okay. Okay. (She gaped her mouth.) “Ummmm. Yummmm. Can I have some more of those black ones with the green spots?” “Oh I know. I’ll read you a story!” She got out her book. It didn’t have words. “Once upon a time there was a girl named . . . Marble. She had a mommy and daddy. Her mommy said she’d get a little sister. Which made her excited. ‘Can I feed her raisins?’ “You can be her little mommy,” her mommy sweetly told her. So she laughed. “Was Marble afraid?” The crocodiles were scary. They lived under a bridge. When she went to catch butterflies, they grinned up at her. Crickets too. One’s legs tired as another made a big Chirrp! Did she tell anybody? Her mama, for example? In a dream she’d told a rabbit. 5 �The tune white The tune white. Its staffs’ quintet. She listened to the crickets. The flat blare of them. (O foggy night.) His lizard boots. Her red-oil pen. A Comanche moon rose high above the plain. Deracinate. (He’d said it.) Dress, socks, hightops. Nude of embrace. (A columbine of her.) Chew. Chewing. Opera comes later. She pictured Mahavira. He barely ate. Squatted in the sun. But her mama had taught her. She knew exactly what she had on. I picture green. A lily-green sweater with cotton buttons and sleeves. Yeh. She wore it as a girl. Then for golf. (It got stored in a trunk.) Soft. Clean. They don’t mak’m like that any more. 6 �Her dimples showed in the drape of the collar. Seventeen all over. We had cars. I know people. A mash of air gets started (fast). The buff. The huge amount of pheasant. (Trotted over in his truck.) The bead on his hat-string rolled around a neck, bugbitten, raw, covered with little bumps. Did she care for him? I thought the life-guard took her fancy. Leave me night. Let me in once in a while, huh? was all he’d said. Her bedroom was a mess (picture pocket books, dolls photographs). Which made him . . . fuck. He was glad to finally be settled. 7 �Bing bing Bing bing. An ever-so-slight gust against the Gregorian chimes. Sun splattered across the park. A plane roared. “It sounds like it’s misjudging,” she’d said to no one in particular. The rrrrrrrr . . . . . of its rush as it rummaged through the clouds. “What’s to be done?” (They’d said it under their breath.) He stood listlessly gazing at the birds. Horses’ hoofs. Sweet-smelling breezes. Harlem trunks before their surprise prairie. Restive hill. Wanting me. Wanting me. What do you want, hill? “Hey dad!” It was from a child. (He didn’t want any.) “Bambinos,” she’d thought driving by the garage. Two were playing. A train sped by. 8 �So what? Is that relevant? The lad looked all right in his knickers and blue socks. Skinny guy. He wrapped the Chronicles in brown kraft paper humming to himself and his kid sister. Paler than pale. But you know, the family was together. They could fold the papers together, stack’m and take off. I seen’m load’n their van. Pile’n it up. One handed the other what to fling out the window. They were always around. Their truck said Chronicle, but I always thought it was some Mexican Chronicle offshoot. Beep beep. Beep beep. Tiny sounds, insistent (apologetic). One car after another dropped its youngster off. Rrrrrruuuuuuuummmmmmmmm. Rrrrrrrruuuuuuuummmmmmmmm. Then, later, Rrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuummmmmmmmm. Rrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmm. Brown air. A carpet of trail. 9 �AAAAAAAUUUUUUUMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm. AAAAAAAUUUUUUMMMMMMM. The long low rev. The skill of an eastern person is still the voice of the mother. “According to Vyasa” her book began, “the universe is egg-shaped and divided into seven lokas.” She’d dozed off, busily scrabbling their locations. 10 �She thought she saw a fellow She thought she saw a fellow. (She’d gone to Alaska.) There are trees. It’s very beautiful. Common birds live in the woods. Narrowly. Narrowly. The contact of no sheep. A painter paints. Hears pelicans, owls, children. Infinite liquid drones from the throat of one who feeds on milkweed. Its advent in the bush. The moss. The groggy leaves. A mockingbird in a lilac shrub quivering beneath the casement. Was the bird guarded? Its neck was wrung but it hadn’t . . . somehow . . . so she quick, plugged its nostrils. (In her dream, the chicken’s feathers hacked.) “Diseases do not go near one who massages his feet before sleep,” says Harish Johari. She’d crossed her legs. Sweat dripped down her forehead. 11 �Ducks spiral near. Cozy up in the grass. Long-necked beaks swivel every which way. A dog bounded across the hill (raced the rising moon). But it never did. He almost ran into the water. 12 �“How much was that?” “How much was that?” (The man was annoyed.) The stigma of ancient ones etched on her tummy. They slam on their throats. Cry. What! So honey, to sell yourself. I know the pixie. Helicon tuba. Sly. She’d dressed in slacks. Piper they’d called her. It didn’t bother her friend (bent on gett’n his duckling pregnant). Blind Han, huh. (The name Haniel from the Bible.) Corn grass told the sighs from babes. Their badness. (That they aspired to such.) How much, William? What would your daughter eat if you didn’t correct her? The one from Shanghai, she’d eat corn (though it’d get her into trouble). In her mouth (into happiness). 13 �Well luv, her mates were her mates, though they shared different values. Just get an abortion. What’s the big deal. I read faster. I count faster. The lady made a point of spelling out his whole name. How ’bout the redhead? (In his youth he was a swimmer.) The man ignited wool. Burned it to a fizz. As a nun she’d been paid little respect. “Hush child. Why don’t you ask your brother?” One gleaned little about her feelings — swimming late (as a summer day goes). She’d filled her pockets with stones. Stepped into the river. Though she carefully left a note. Dear One. You’ve been perfect. Mosaic of noise. Of voice, heart, credence. No daddy. I can’t come to your party. 14 �Calla lilies! Calla lilies! Wine-colored, pearl. “What color was the sky?” “Brown. The same brown as today only she wouldn’t believe it.” “The woman kept saying, ‘I’m from Korea. I’m different.’ But what would that have to do with the sky?” The tide of it. (It slides down the mud.) Its own mud. Its very own mud. Brown, right? Brown is the important color. Dense yet light-filled. “Of course you’re starving. Here take these home.” (She’d gone to Safeway around 11:30 at night.) A rat ran over the hill. Chink chink chink pattered its little feet. Meanwhile bells. Derived from what (did you say)? She wanted to think of some extraordinary gift. 15 �In and out. In and out. The branches had created a canopied walkway. Silvery-green gnomes waddled about the gorge. Cool-legged, quick, they stalked the air. Huddled in their wad of friendliness. Her leer (her “team”) draping her arm around a brother’s narrowing shoulders. Daisies slumped. (Their thick bush root-beer colored.) To grow a lotus, someone’d said, just wrap the seed in mud. Look how it sprouts from the side of its mother’s belly! The hollow afterwards. (The places a mother goes.) Her life, outside my body. Green air. (The sheer stop.) They’d cut off his arm, which had gangrened by that time. A butterfly. A quail. Who’s to sing along? 16 �Is that a deer? Is that a deer? It looked like a wolf. It could be a puppy. (She glared at the animal.) Tiny cabbage butterflies fluffed the hill with life. The little body romped. It moved like a deer, but it was furry. And fatter! “Deers aren’t chubby,” she’d muttered to herself. And alone. Usually deer — don’t they? — travel in threes. Raccoons are dangerous said the article on disease. Never encourage them, and never let your children play near areas where they wander. Strolling through the wooded glade (glowing seabrewed light). “Raccoons are PANDAS!” Near a startlingly white snout, its un-panda-like mask. The reddish one in her book was tiptoeing in the sun. Its shadow resembled a long skinny branch. The diction (which he’d contested). The man needed to get a degree. 17 �“Have a nice time, dear.” (She knew they’d eat somewhere.) The falcon had a mate (amongst the yellow rape and banksia flowers). “I keep thinking about the scarf. It’ll give him pleasure,” she’d laughed roguishly. Count twenty birds. From his canoe he’d aimed and shot. A beaver sunned, belly-up in the rapids. “Big Nips.” Such are entitled the burgers. “Water not only visually reflects the environment, it molecularly reflects it,” the writer had said. 18 �What’s that word? What’s that word? It woke her up. “It doesn’t do anything for you,” the salesperson had said. “You can always use it as a layering piece,” she’d added, cradling her mug. A white-ribbed tube circled her body, swished to the side, then poofed. Boing. Boing. Not only her but the whole world was up. She listened to the chimes. Massaged by wind, their cluster of peals. Is that ocean or is it traffic? The far-off roar, behind bells, breeze, a distant apartment’s vacuum. It bothered her that she couldn’t tell. A bird darted from a bush, ruffled its feathers, then sank, back, beneath the bush. The beak of her. Crazy. Lavish. The cull. (The pull to excess.) Rickety clangs blasted a forthcoming storm. 19 �The drift of night, sloppily. A bird out back chirped hollowly. So care. Can you be so fulfilled that it doesn’t matter? Think of yarn, some hot cheap color. A scarf is made. It dangles to the ground. The person drapes it around her neck twice, thrice, maybe even four times. But then her cigarette drops. Oozes out a hole. Though it doesn’t unravel, she gets tired of the hole. She’d wanted it to be glorious. So she kept it. Even after she didn’t like it any more. For which she didn’t respect herself. “I’ve got too much junk!” “Son of a bitch!” cried the woman behind a curtain. “Can I wear this chemise?” she’d twirled, mimicking a serve. “What do you think? Can I wear this on the court?” Her parents (being Buddhists) really had no religion. It was so watered down. Noth’n to hold onto. 20 �“Of course you will develop it,” said the theologian (not the local superior). Those who are absorbed. Often they are terribly polite. Take a lapse. An absorbed person’s deepest relationship might be with that. “I can’t wear taupe,” she says with utter certainty. For me, well, there are so many taupes. 21 �The day’s dry leaves The day’s dry leaves. (So it fashioned her.) Drowsy. Hushed. Twilight a relief. Masculine soil. (Moonrise to the right.) But the woman had lost her eyesight (and the memory of her eyesight). Drops of rain meandered from the sky. Cushioning the phone, she looked out over the city. The young man’s jacket slung over his briefcase, monogrammed in gold (soft, Italian calf). A shell home in the mountain. A black-throated warbler. A snow goose. An oriole. Trace it back. “The bean stalk boils the beans,” she’d said, but he didn’t get it. I admit I am ashamed. But they were, well, not thin. He liked them Marilyn Monroe-ish. A yellow note (a square of Swedish paper) poked from a vial of stems. Your father was a player? 22 �My father was a wholesaler. His thing was quantity not jacked-up price. A sarong. A queen. Her ga-ga sort of laugh. “Yes,” rang the chimes (the wind’s tongues). I wish ivy. I wish crumpets. I wish hollyhocks, magnolias, peas. I wish the consummate ocean of turtles. Panache with a queue. (Is that what you’re saying?) It wasn’t the turn-on that she’d expected. A scorpion eats silk. Does it spin a cocoon? Does it exhaust itself and sleep? Insects don’t miscarry. Right. Is that right? The lily of her becoming. She’d appliquéd one. Characters were roots (yellow and black). Was it affiliated with anything? Did she draw, for example? 23 �In the sense that it’s deliberate. Not like the slow woman. One had a thick hand-crotcheted flower. One had scree woven in amazing knots. Muscle. Bone. (Surly and ribbed.) Seed-lines that feel alive — scattered fragments and pebbles and slobber and God knows what — (like the man said). Yes. That’s real. Something solid and hassle-free. 24 �Coo coo coo Coo coo coo. Coo coo coo. Shards of the day broken with the bells. Her cheeks. The pale skin cracked. Swat! Your face. (Skin meated away.) Frail throats in the evening light. Slapping the air. Grabbing with my fist. “Good morning,” said the woman. “Finally summer, huh?” Old skin. Wrinkles in the folds. Why would you wear an earring? “I collect salt.” (She’d said it as if she were serious.) Daytimes she did nursing. Ran around the extreme care unit. Did everyone’s job (who wrote her up). At lunch and dinner — man, Sunday night — you couldn’t get near the place! “God damn!” she’d shout, before leaving for the quarry. 25 �“I’m hot.” The woman fiddled with her sweater. “Yesterday I went to the mall. To cool off, mainly.” She kept twisting its two sleeves, whose ends continuously unwound. She’d raised her arms (reclipping her barrette). “I find I’m simply passive. Like . . . oh, I don’t know. Is this normal?” Staring at her shoes, eyes relaxed around the ties. So like are you saying that in the manger . . . It wasn’t of consequence. Just a birth like any other. The slow woman paused, “Is that asparagus fern?” (Plants moved for her she’d mentally noted.) “I hear the baby swoon. I feel it ride my belly.” She’d pet the part, then straddle her arm over it, gently. The bleeding of her spouse. (The manger was a dugout.) A husband nests. Bedlam inside. A filly was born on the threshold of its father. 26 �We wish you a merry Christmas, which — the air was rife with it. We made a hollow in a stone. Covered it with wreaths. Crèche-like creatures slurping from the mud-holes. Ablaze with their tongue. (Little bead of hope.) So far, nothing. She talks but he forgets. Father, it’s me. My wish is to serve. 27 �Gentle hill Gentle hill. Leisurely off the mountain. The name of the archer resonates in the sound. Each bow a lancet. A broken woman from all reports. Let me buy you string, one fellow’d asked her. A kite (the woman) who had a son. Who then, later (the son was five) got married. Thin. (Sickly.) Thin. (Tired.) But she paid attention. When the teacher spoke, she heard. The woman laughed. (She’d waited for her mother to die.) You’ve seen firewood turn to tinder. But ash doesn’t turn back into firewood. Delivering her child (leaning against a doorway). She wound the placenta around its face. It was a lean year. The baby wouldn’t have survived. “May she reincarnate in a prosperous womb,” was all she’d said. 28 �Slow and ought. That that was something she did. That she would have to do given her history of blood relatives. “Don’t make such a fuss. It’ll all work out,” averred the husband’s mother. In her mind raising children was expensive. So she sought redemption. 3:00 a.m. recite poetry, chant classical texts read one volume of the Lotus Sutra seated in the lotus position 5:00 a.m. snack (thick rice gruel with walnuts and crystallized sugar) 7:00 a.m. complete morning studies stroll in garden breakfast (fermented bean curd, wheat gluten, crusty rice soaked in fermented bean curd sauce) 3:00 p.m. resume study Bardo voice. The mother heard the rhythm. From a forest knoll, numerous somnolent shadows. Past grassy fields and a wild sheep path. 29 �That belly. That basket. I know it when I see it, she’d said. Raspy, depleted. (The young girl’s call.) Did she draw the cow for you? Bastion of voice. Within her. Within the Calvary of her. She wished to be a priest but where to tuck her literary career? 30 �Chiiiiiiiiirrrrr Chiiiiiiiiirrrr. Chiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrr. Cheep cheep cheep. Cawwww. Cawwww. Cawwww. Bundles of seeds, purple-petaled. The shift. It was afternoon. Suddenly, late afternoon. I felt it as a tremor. The whir as it receded. The automat that fed the prince was in need of repair, they’d screamed. The hummingbird babe. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Blip. Splat. Its mother sucked the ruby flowers. Lad of equality. I bequeath how many? He’d sat in his chair kicking his foot. Which struck her as blemish-less. “The rhythms of Padua wrestle through us both,” said Mencius, the fourth-century Confucian. 31 �The man was a genius. He thought the best of other people. Him and his friend (someone scathingly called them “boys”). He’d said, “Well, youth is valued in our society,” A riff. A gig. He wouldn’t talk. He was thirsty, man. He fuck’n wanted a drink of water. And afterwards too. I felt he was stunned. Those last six years, lyin’ on a bed in a suit. I kinda wished he’d died. Imagine every day gett’n up, dress’n. Probably he was sweating. I would be, day after day. A woman down the street. He had. And sons. Were they musical? The blues in Chicago was born about that time. After the war. People from the delta . . . The woman brought him toothbrushes since Buddhists don’t brush their teeth with animal bristles. 32 �year of the horse ��Year of the Horse “Year of the Horse, the most auspicious of the twelve astrological signs . . .” her book had begun. That was her year. “Circling Mount Kailash just once in a Horse year is equal to thirteen koras performed at any other time.” (A kora is a devotional circuit around the sacred mountain’s base, the author explained.) She’d been in a store randomly fishing through a basket of bracelets. Each had a charm depicting a different Chinese symbol. “Which am I,” she’d wondered, but hers was missing. Beyond her hand blanched trees waved. Dark clouds swabbed the sky. ❍ “Welcome home, my love. Glad you like the tulips.” 35 �A callow moon absorbed and toned a glowing bowl of flowers. Tomato petals. Deep-bottomed cups. “Exotic,” she’d thought, twirling the vessel. Supple. Tall. Willowy like a geisha. (Slim with maybe one bold feature.) ❍ Sweet air. Cool and crisp as evening settled in. Orange-beaked ducks waddled about the lake. Or muddy pond, elevated by their slender necks. And backs. And dawn-pink feathers. Teeny birds twittered, pecked at the gravel nervously. Peep peep. Peep peep. (Lush cries from baby throats.) But the ducks. One entered reeds. The other, looking around every which way (as if it were considering many other options) invariably followed. So that in the water, on the shore, on the wide expanse of grass, they stayed together. ❍ “Moo moo moo,” croaked one duck. “Moo moo, moo” replied the other. The medley had awakened her. 36 �A gardener (his crazy leaf blower) was combing through the grass. One leaf flopped over the brim of her tulip’s vase. Could it need water? All the others were firm. “Tomorrow they’ll start to fade,” she’d thought. She could already detect, in the flesh of one petal . . . A second flower, whose edges sagged, had subtly visible stretch-marks. ❍ Night. Black and silent. The way your body slides into it, testing, gliding — is it going to be disturbed? The slightest sound . . . The feeling of inner . . . weighing . . . The vast formation of westward-flying birds. 37 �Giraffe-like stalks Giraffe-like stalks. Her hoya’s wailing gropes. Is that frost on the lilies? A gardener dragged a dead half-tree off to the refuse yesterday. “They’re a wonderful company,” the salesperson had said. “Trekkers on Mt. Everest test each and every product.” Cheep cheep cheep. A bird’s sweet voice from out the rubble. ❍ Wind like war. It slashed flowers. Where is summer (month of the year’s longest day)? A limb of leaves swept the mud. Though the sky needed its virulent breath. Even crickets avoided exposing their wings. ❍ March! Nights bright. Bedraggled pigeons flooded the gorge. A squirrel, a bit nebulous — stopping and starting — young, tan (not bushy). 38 �A fat cat crawled the hill. Its arc of light through the daffodils and sweet peonies. Tigerish, antsy. Eyes focused but at the same time scanning. ❍ His cat was fat. Sprightly but plump. Pedigreed Semite. (I’d wondered if he had a pet.) Suzanne Farrell was warned (You’re a little pudgy.) But by his emissaries. Not him. In both biographies . . . I mean it just says that after work they went to the donut shop. ❍ Dowager breeze (salacious, mussed). “Will last for months!” said the tag. Its notch formed a heart, clasped around a lower stalk. At first she’d figured violets (stirred by the montage). “Maybe exacum’s a kind of violet,” she’d thought. ❍ “I’m anorexic. I just pretend to eat.” That’s what the man should have said to his waitress. 39 �The family had been seated. They were used to his ordering nothing. “A cup of soup,” he’d instructed the girl. But when it arrived, he’d let it sit. Which she took to mean that he found it distasteful. Waitress: “Let me take it back! We’ll get you something else.” Anorexic: “No. No. It’s not the soup. It’s my wife. She made me eat a huge breakfast and now I’m not hungry.” ❍ Bones and wings. (Vile, smart.) Think of a chicken. Feet too, though they go into the soup. With dumplings and parsley, a savory brew on a chilly night. Transversal. Incumbent. Slurping up the river. ❍ Queer light. (Shimmery.) To what season does it adhere? The opulent park faced a supermarket. 40 �“Do you have your Safeway card,” inquired the checkout girl as she’d finished beeping a mound of food. Her woozy customer waved a piece of plastic. “How much was that,” he asked, staring at some wieners. “I don’t know,” responded the girl. (Individual items weren’t marked.) “I wouldn’t be able to find it on the computer right away. Do you want to charge them back?” The man took a stab at processing his card. “How much was that?” he tried again, peering now at buns. “I can’t tell you,” the girl repeated. She was beginning to get agitated. “Would you like to charge something back?” She glanced at the line. She seemed uncertain how to handle the situation. ❍ Baggy wind. “The day would make sense,” she’d thought, “if it were twenty degrees warmer.” Little red flowers (cracked at the neck). Plants were taking their time. The floral head. In summer it sprouts. What would a cheesy winter accomplish? 41 �Mother of all creatures. His rice. Frog’s. ❍ So the skinny man who reads, works out, disinherits himself (his wife is his mouth). Dark-colored stones have the most iron and the highest magnetic intensity, she’d read. One develops a pit bull’s grip. Unmassaged by God, anorexics are pit bulls. ❍ Is the mother of The Gap son? A jungle-gym of tar. Her tenacity . . . To rinse his mind (like the man said). 42 �So you’re ten “So you’re ten. You don’t go to school. You got no mother, no father, noth’n the fuck to do all day. What d’ya think you think? What goes through your fuck’n brain? “I mean like you could get a rifle. Kill a bird. What the fuck for eight fuck’n years! “Mostly you’re mad. No one wants you around.” He put his face in his hands. ❍ “There’s that cat,” she’d thought, inching her car into her assigned space. Large green eyes in a black proprietorial body stared her down as she’d locked the door, opened the trunk, then wandered away from the animal. (It was seated on the hood of the car in the next slot.) She’d seen it before. On other cars. On the floor. It was not a stray. “Maybe it wants a nice warm engine,” began her speculations. “It’ll probably switch to my hood as soon as I’m out of sight.” The moon, a brilliant sliver, rose behind its reedy shape. 43 �❍ Stubby leaves. Six, seven, sodden and dangling. She’d pressed a finger to the soil. Hard as a rock. It was her housekeeper’s job to water it. Should she mention it? The woman didn’t speak English very well. “Do you like plants?” she’d initially inquired. “Oh yes! Will take good care,” the sweet young lady had smiled. She had, but she missed times. ❍ “Bluegrass. Or ‘Newgrass.’ They don’t know what the fuck they’re doin’. It’s not clean.” (He paused.) She herself had one tape with one song that she played over and over and over. Once while she was driving she’d suddenly heard the bass. Thump thump. Thump thump. Back and forth between two keys. “Oh my god!” she’d muttered. She’d driven along listening even more closely. ❍ A whale breathes. (Its vibration in the rocks.) She’d shut her eyes. The mountain shook with flames. 44 �She’d been staring out the window. “Aren’t you a little early?” (She’d mentally waved hello.) A Monarch flapped a path across the trees. 45 �The day was glorious The day was glorious. Rabbits, cats, birds in every cranny. A gardener passed. On his head (he carried) a groundcloth full of dirt. “That’s good,” she’d thought, amused with the reversal. A second gardener passed. Then a third with the same load. Watching them wend their way around the building, broad backs, uniforms, nebulous faces and eyes. ❍ Peach! Not pink! And ever-so-soft yellow striae. She’d stared transfixed at the fragrant horseshoe blossoms. Sun flickered from the leaves. New yellow-green and hoary alligator-green. “They look like today,” she’d thought as a butterfly paddled north. ❍ “You’re all done,” the doctor’d said. Her dizzy brain 46 �could hardly take it in. The surgery had gone smoothly and much less painfully than she’d expected. Late light on the lake. White heads bobbing. Ducks mobbed the inlet. Caw caw caw. CAW CAW CAW. Another jay was swinging on a brittle pine-tree branch. “A storm is brewing.” A few drops had grazed her window. “What’s it going to do?” she’d wondered, glad she had thought to bring a coat. ❍ Who are they? They whistle, hum little arias. She was riding uphill. Her bike took a dive. The bike had a beak. Bearded to infinity. (Geckos from the woods’ bebop.) My bed of white under layers of fallen snow. ❍ So you’re saying it was a crisis. Or could have been only she’d avoided it. She watched his muscles strain, lugging it over the hump. Ball of the clock (the urchin an inference). 47 �“It’s me,” she’d thought, recalling her teacher who’d (on hearing of a discrepancy), immediately got up, crossed the room and pulled out his calendar to check. ❍ Paper petals. Even as she looked, they’d spread their wings. The peach was actually tangerine. (On its crisp ruffled rim.) A third unopened bud resembled, from above, the about-to-snap mouth of a — she’d almost said “frog” but without teeth, its triangular sheath — “It’s more like an alligator,” she’d muttered. From indoors, its shrieks. 48 �Whoooo whoooo whoooo Whoooo whoooo whoooo. Lowering sun, blinding in the dusk. Young voices (and cats) from beyond the shrouded hill. Cackling and raw, its blue thorns sober. Hay-colored grass cycling claws, nails, footprints. Silence. (The meadow’s dry excitement.) ❍ Kid: “Hey!” An antelope wandered by the nursery. A kangaroo, a bear, chubby and wise. Cowboy: “Sell me their skins. I want to wear a furry jacket. “Will they match her dress?” he wonders, thinking of the one he’d just had wrapped with last week’s salary. ❍ Pregnant sky. (The cowboy holds them to the light.) Cheep cheep cheep. Chiiiiirrrrr chiiiiirrrrr. Coooooooooooooo. Succulent peeps. Is this night? Is this the day of the dark moon? 49 �A dove flitted from the underbrush. ❍ “Do you mind if I open this window,” a woman’d asked. A powdery smell of flowers wafted in as she spoke. “Is that music or the washer?” Her stylist stopped, aware, suddenly, of the opinion of the recording that her question had presumed. “It’s the washer,” someone replied. “We need a new one, obviously.” “And a dryer. And a desk. We need a place for the computer more than anything.” ❍ “Hey, motherfucker! What’s goin’ on?” (These are my best times.) A flock of black, chicken-skinned buzzards, feathers frozen against their sides, sat menacingly on an outcropping. His brothers played ball. His father fished. He hit well. People noticed his swing. “ ’Cause they’re real. No fumes of exhaust,” he’d continued. So that’s it. He played ball. (He was serious, man.) I admire that. 50 �“Like what d’ya think? Am I missing somethin’? I keep think’n’ I’m missing somethin’.” ❍ Yellow haze. Its shadow on the grass. Seed balls lopping crusty branches. Swash. A dog bounded across her path. An owl. Old now. Its nightly song, drab. Crickets chirped but not their full mid-summer chorus. 51 �Her bones lagged Her bones lagged. Was it the moon? Frosty clouds with their lapis light. Scurrying, scurrying (like wraiths) in the hills. Branches spread loosely. Ravished the early sun. They reminded her of her. In her southern-facing window. Stretching. Relaxing. Her empty body’s ribs. ❍ “Was that a robin?” She listened to the rain. Blossoms sang. A chorus of trill. Gardeners had mulched a golden bed of flowers. Rich dark sod beneath bright buds. Caw. Caw. Caw. A jay’s long breath. “That other bird probably was a sparrow.” ❍ “Within the black brushstrokes of a Chinese character — the straight lines of woman and horse combine to equal mother — which, if the word is in your consciousness, all you would see in the pinks and browns and grays of a painting, for example, would be that pictogram,” her book was saying. 52 �“Toishanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, though pronounced differently, are composed of common nonphonetic pictographic characters. The structure of their rules, however, adheres to Mandarin grammar. Children raised in the ‘lesser’ dialects simply make do, combining formal phraseology with the rhythms of their own speech. “While ordinary language seeks more precise and differentiated meanings, spiritual languages try to free it from verbal imprisonment.” Or sloth, she’d added. Bones and blood are its residence. ❍ Coo coo coo. The day fell hard. It drooped down, suspended from seemingly nothing. The clear trail of sound, evenly paced, softened by an umbrella of trees. Leafless boughs. Their eerie kow-tow. ❍ A sliver moon humped the bay — awkward, alone — as if it had been kicked (booted) out into space. “Hey, where am I? What just happened?” 53 �“The hill is worried,” she’d thought, squinting at its quilt of bumps. “The earth can’t stop,” she’d thought. (It’d gorged witlessly.) “Can it purge?” She’d noticed rivulets. ❍ “Three to four feet of snow are expected tomorrow.” (The voice sounded sorrowful.) “Just last week the crocuses were out. Evenings were long and saturated with a pleasant glow.” She’d tried to picture sweet yellow crocuses. “Maybe they’re used to it,” she mused. The sound of wind through yawning (shifting) crevices aroused her from her stupor. Night fell. Her hydrangea’s skinny limbs staking their random claim. ❍ Frozen sky. Broken light. Flecks shocked black (with a pale shudder). Ethereal blobs baked there. Where? Are those trees? Sharp chirps. (Shouts from bird throats.) 54 �Smoke puffed the crackled sky. Sinuous, gnarly, a pulse exuding sweetness. A strand (as in yarn). It oozes from the hummocks’ tips, dribbles, then splits. ❍ The crush. The feisty (in-your-face) vein of her hydrangea’s leaves. (Like if leaves could take steroids . . . ) The poet amassed her verses. Reamassed them daily. When she’d killed herself, the world thought they were “meant” to be the way they were that day. Her husband’d said no, of course not. He’d rearranged them in a way that made more sense given his exclusive proximity to her. But people accused him of being controlling. Manipulating the evidence that maybe he’d “caused” her suicide. So he went silent. Didn’t want his account to be just another “version.” 55 �What color is the sky? “What color is the sky,” she’d mused, casting her eyes east. “It’s not purple.” Brushed with plum, the horizon shed a diaphanous veil. Only to leave . . . she couldn’t pin it down. Earlier, as she’d pulled out of her garage, she’d spied that cat, looking very custodial, parking itself on the cement. Its soft eyes had fallen on her slowly, slowly taken her in, and just as slowly released her to the notquite-so-black air. “Who’s that cat?” she’d wondered again. The cat. The sky. She’d ejected her cassette. The digital screen flashed, “See Ya’!” ❍ “Please use the language correctly” she’d hissed, though she was aware that Miss Manners — well, “When someone says, ‘Hi. How are you?’, you don’t . . . you take it as a vernacular expression meaning ‘Good day.’ ” Yet it wasn’t the protocol. It was the dilution of the language that so pained her. “If writing is the creation of a subset of reality, it is voice that sets the parameters of the subset.” A friend had made this statement. 56 �But what if the voice, the very beautiful voice to whose reality one clung because of its grace, described a lesser world . . . the disjunct . . . that (a poetics in itself, voice [sound] being a subtle form of movement) . . . ? ❍ “Chipper sky,” she thought as she’d glimpsed through the pines some buoyant clouds. She’d been reading. “Sound is the root of all other sensory potentials,” the author had begun. “The reverberation of our words, the ideas they represent, form the mind’s patterns. “Four levels of sound are recognized in Vedic and Puranic literature,” he’d continued. “They are called Vaikhari, Madhyama, Paśyanti and Para. Vaikhari dwells in the throat and is our gross, articulated sound. Madhyama dwells in the heart and is the idea behind the sound. Paśyanti (seeing) dwells in the solar plexus. It is sound’s archetypal content. Para (transcendent) is the essence of all sound and dwells in the root chakra. “While the powers of sound reside in progressively lower chakras, this is not because they are progressively lower powers, but because they control progressively deeper and more difficult parts of our nature,” the author had stressed. 57 �❍ Fog licked the hill, leaving moist, green grass. Evergreen, she’d decided, winding around a bend. Earlier, mist — a steeping brew – opaque and hard like an object. She’d stared at the blue beneath the still-white ceiling. Billowy puffs morphed sculpture after sculpture. The sun rose. Blossoms fanned the air. ❍ “Look at that cloud!” she muttered to herself, noticing a ghoulish mass. The post-dawn sky had pushed pink out. A poltergeist, amoeba-like, swaddled the air, rubbing the rouge from the dregs of the moon’s shadow. Wind blew, but the hairy trees were stagnant. Ice plants too. Their paisley flowers still. She recalled the nasturtiums trailing the road. No stars. No clouds. Even the horizon had stayed uninvolved. 58 �A little color for your desk, my darling “A little color for your desk, my darling.” A yellow card flanked yellow flowers. She stroked their stems, then turned the pot to view the buds from various angles. Pale. Tense. (Their straining, oddly, touched her.) She listened to the drops that grazed her darkening window. Bunches of daisies (strong orange centers) mirrored the incipient moon. ❍ “So, Christ. Calvary. What flowers were there?” (The horizon looked glossy.) “God damn. What are they think’n’? They’re not really nailing him!” “Did you notice his feet?” “The bones I did. Long fibrous sinews, dangling, leaky, stiff.” “Stiff?” “Well, not yet, but I could sense it coming. In a few days, without water.” 59 �❍ Dreamboat clouds. Sun rose on the valley. Lupine and tall, pink, sweet-smelling sweet-peas. “I picked some to bring you, but they shriveled in my hands,” a woman quietly said. She wore a pendant. Lavender-colored, small. A rhinestone was another decoration. “I guess they need their vine,” she’d proffered. Cluster of green (or bouquet of leaves). Lethargy lodged in her flesh. ❍ “So I’d send out these head shots with no makeup and my chipped tooth.” She’d wanted to avoid filmmaking’s fatuousness (its “wash of words between visual spectacles”). At the orgy of flummery (perks, fuss, money-wasting) she’d refused, for example, to bring her own hair or makeup person with her to a set. “There I am, with my book and my banana, in a giant motor home,” she’d reported to an interviewer. “So I ask for a smaller one.” Thus she gazed. Over fir (sheltering mountain hemlock). 60 �❍ Black and white. Silhouettes glaring. “They look like steers!” She stared out the window. A squirrel dashed across the redwood rail then hopped into a bush. Through the mist she’d thought it was a rat. Radiant sun on the turquoise water. (Distant fields newly spiked with stalks.) With a bolt of light the image collapsed. 61 �The sun rose The sun rose. Extensive beds of dusty-colored flowers. Blue especially. Many patches of wildly different blues. Floating in platters of steaming greens, large brown potatoes, sliced carrots, and peas. A cairn’s prayer flags high up on a summit. Ferocious wind (snow needles) blasting a frozen face. It loomed like a phantom of some ancient rite having nothing to do with her. ❍ “But everything to do with Philip.” (Awakening, her thought.) “ Them guys’re Buddhists,” the cook had explained to the others at Marblemount. She pictured him at Sauk — “Whalen’s mountain” — a small dark hump in the mid-afternoon haze. Gravel and scree and more and more rocks came tumbling off the ridge. ❍ Rain! Drops swiped then dribbled down her windshield. 62 �“But it’s quiet,” she’d thought. “As in aftermath.” “It’s not about the streets being wet.” “That Christ lived. Like that.” ❍ Earlier a foehn through the fluffy pine. (Its branches hung with a certain perky luster.) “Feral birds,” the man had said, referring to a flock that had hovered over the city. While they’d favored Telegraph Hill, that day they’d swarmed the Presidio. Rash caws, picaresque, husky. (He’d been meditating.) “I picture butterflies. Hoards (beneath a canopy). Hairy wild wings.” “I picture cats. And green snakes with skinny tongues.” “I see a crocodile crouched at the river’s neck. Jungle silence (inside the breath).” ❍ The sky and its fruits. Her hoya’s leg was strident, whereas a second (older) branch hobbled along with shriveled leaves. 63 �Each year she’d worried, “Will it last through the winter?” Each summer it sprouted waxy grape-colored blossoms. “Sprawled out huge. That’s how Philip concentrated.” (The thought roiled through her body.) A storehouse (a gap). A vast (empty) shell. ❍ Jonquils! (Yellow) Prissy flowers at the garden’s cusp. Dirt as receptor. (Student of the sky.) Parrots’ croak (entwined in the scratchy drip drop drip of the afternoon’s after-storm). A boa-constrictor having eaten an elephant. That impression. ❍ Cats milled. The place looked wild. Talons arched. A hawk beside the door. We plodded along. The only sound, the soft crush of leaves and distant wind blowing eerily through the peaks. Drip drop drip. The sound and then the soft of her stomach round and full against the sheets. 64 �❍ “Was that a rodent?” (It wasn’t a dog.) An animal. Dead. Innards splayed, seethingly, primitively. It had lain on an onramp. (You made a sharp left.) Before you turned, you couldn’t see clearly. Afterwards, well . . . I imagine both parties were stunned. 65 �She drove east She drove east sweating. A gnarly stump of summit expressed itself from the fog. Whipping fog. (Bizarre rock apparitions.) Root wads clawed the air. ❍ Drops against the pane. On her porch from the eaves, on the drive from the trees, on the hill from the clouds chuck full to bursting. She could see the night’s blackness through the corner of her eye. Her neighbor’s voice percolated from above. Several televisions, radio, vacuum — “How come they’re always home,” she muttered, “My day is upstairs.” The woman sweeps. Then “checks-in” with her man. ❍ “President’s Day! And the country is going to war.” She’d felt it in the traffic, light for a Monday morning. “Traffic was light today,” a friend had said the previous Saturday. “I haven’t read the paper but I’m suspecting everyone’s glued to their t.v.” 66 �She hadn’t responded. On Monday, however, she’d paid particular attention. ❍ A beacon. Silver-yellow slithered through the glass. “Good morning! The storm is over.” Which she’d adored. It had started just as she’d fallen asleep. A slow gradual pound, lightening to a patter. Then drops. Then lull. In the middle of the night she’d awakened — a few slight creaks from the upstairs floorboards. “He must be going to work,” she’d mused, having not previously considered that the Russian husband of the railing wife might be some sort of manual laborer. ❍ She’d listened. Floorboards traced the afternoon sun. All around, solid white (the ghostly limbs of scrawny trees). Purple wildflowers carpeted the hill (its aqua stream cascading, bubbling, frothing). 67 �Staccato birds. Butterflies. Rioting in the filigree. ❍ Dim light, the shadow of a woman’s body. Her thigh, rudderless, like a moored boat. A mosquito hawk (intent yet benign). Improbable like the man said. As a shimmering lady with luminescent skin held out her hand (beckoned me to come to her), a fragrant leaf wafted its way earthward. ❍ “Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere.” HuiNeng had been piling firewood in the market when he’d randomly heard that phrase. So for ten years he had to hide out in the mountains. (He’d been confirmed as the Sixth Patriarch and all the monks were jealous.) Then he wrote the Platform Sutra which Gary Snyder called Zen’s first clear philosophical statement. “Everybody that does Zen has a close relationship with that text,” he’d said. 68 �❍ “So for Gary — a hawk perched on a treeless pinnacle of stone that for Jeffers = ‘Fierce consciousness joined with final disinterestedness’ — was too divisive. I mean human beings are also natural. Vulnerable as wolves.” “The thing is they are wolves. The imprint is still there.” 69 �Sun flanked the pine Sun flanked the pine. Soft sun. Lazy. “The heat is breaking records.” (Her neighbor had passed by.) “I forget it’s still January.” A bird flew off, brashly, dramaturgically. Like a stone in her stomach, drab, puny, yellow. ❍ Dusk. The hill a maze of vaguely shaped stumps, tree-trunks, branches. Thin Philip! In a dusty book. Probably taken in Japan when he’d taught English at the Y. It had Philip’s flavor, but not his succulence. She glanced up. A bird was pooping on the glass. ❍ A blonde in jeans, pony tail swishing, had been walking beside her Asian boyfriend. (They’d parked. Were hauling a ton of packages.) “I don’t like my fiancé’s taste,” she’d apologized to others in the elevator. 70 �“A man rode all the way down with me. First I waited for him to get in, then for him to finish sorting his mail. I could tell he wanted to go right back up. So I waited.” Until an apprentice has been hurt by his tools, the craft has not fully entered his body. ❍ A joker. That’s what it was! The face in her dream, black and white. (Its intelligent, focused eyes.) But all was bland. Or not bland. Wan. There is really no need to huff and puff when dancing. When the music enters one’s heart, heavy breathing, which is a kind of resistance to the music, stops. Having read this, she’d dreamed about the face. An owl cooed through the low, cool air. ❍ The sun is trying, she mused as she’d gazed at the wobbly grasses. Mud from the storm slopped over the drive. She’d awakened with the light. Tweet tweet tweet. Such a sweet sound, she’d thought, mesmerized by almostspring’s vibrancy. 71 �She’d curled under her covers. They’re voices of little bodies! For weeks now there’d been nothing but jays. They’re brash, she’d thought. They steal. They’re mean. But their caw . . . to her . . . who loved fog, crows, crashing waves. 72 �She’d rounded a bend She’d rounded a bend. Blue. Baby blue mostly, but almond, slate, cobalt, cerulean, against a landscape of hill, forest, sea. Their greens and oddly-shaped trees (one a perfect triangle) sedate yet jolly. “It could hail,” someone said. “The weatherman predicted it for today.” The rising sun had formed a mountain. Above a horizon of mountains, topping a horizon of trees. A helicopter, hovering low over the traffic, looked like a fish swimming in blossoms. Its light beeped. ❍ The beauty of rain. Its after-life. The ground glistened with a roasted hue. And the pine’s green, lively and humble as it sprouted new needles. Between storms. One gardener with his rake. He’d stack the leaves then (pushing them through the wrought-iron fence) mulch the hillside. Which, eroded, seemed unpromising as a container of soil. 73 �❍ “Zinnias. They’re a perfectly respectable flower. But because they were in my yard (and the feeling wasn’t right in my family . . . )” An orchid on the path, so easy to pick. The trail (rimming the drainage) climbed a tight series of switchbacks and ended, finally, at a view of two lakes, one indigo, one green with the milk of oozing glaciers. Tall brown hare, prairie dogs, wolves always present but cautiously distant. ❍ What bird? What thin long bird with a flair for swift in-fighting? Slender body, transparent wings. I pictured it quiet. Waiting for something. Sort of iridescent. Like orange (neon) would shimmer from its willowy, pin-thin, tinder-like core. Silence stopped by silence. ❍ Night. Dark as salmon. 74 �The pond where she’d fished. It’d had turtles, bugs, some (not a lot of) plants. Mostly it was deserted. That was the sweet part. The notion being time. (A thrust.) Like coming home from war. “Look at the saplings, daddy!” ❍ Whereas during the night she’d awakened and heard . . . nothing. NOTHING. Like in the very high Sierras, beyond the main trails. Birds. But not a chorus. Only tweet. (Pause.) Tweet tweet. (Pause.) Tweet. You listen like crazy. Crisp z-shaped clouds collapsed from the sky, their fluffy white incongruent with the maraud. Alabaster non-noise. 75 �Hey! They’re peach! Hey! They’re peach! (The Negev’s sand. The sabra’s fruit.) Was the Dead Sea dead? There was a lot of salt. But, you know, I was so hungry. I couldn’t think about the water. Like picking a scab. Wanting to chew that hard little skin. ❍ “Mommy, can I have the toy?” But then he threw up. Vomit rose like a fountain. The son of an addict is clean. (That’s what she’d said, laying his lean body down.) He simply refuses (junk, medicine, pop). When his mother smokes he says, “Please mama. You’ll die. It’s not good.” ❍ Coo coo coo. Cheep cheep. Cooooooooooooooo. Caw caw caw. The sky deranged. The woman in her corner. 76 �A big person, she could see in three directions. But she couldn’t twist easily. She’d look out. Watch the caterpillar trucks load and unload their long swiveling bodies. ❍ Bulging. Though her stride was that of the thin. Clothing also. Soft sheer fabrics. Cropped hair, garish tattoos. The jamming of her (inside pants, for example). Loafers. Scuffs. Their wear (after wearing). ❍ She wanted to read. She’d sit but then someone would walk by. Gobbling it up. (Each morsel demanded another.) Eating from the inside. Having it dwell. (A being consumes the cavernous world.) She looked, watched, anticipated the little boy’s coming. ❍ Whoops! Was that a tweet? One bell bleated in the shallow late-morning wind. 77 �Swirls of ash. (The stolid trees spoke nothing.) “So I was scheming how I could rush out . . . but when I got in the car, well, I actually liked the quiet.” She’d paused, removed the sweater she’d been unbuttoning. Then her hat. Shoes. Pushed them all to the side. ❍ The purr. The steady hum. “Is that rain? Or is it traffic?” It was dark. She couldn’t tell from her bed. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. She listened harder. “Why can’t I tell if it’s raining?” She tried again to hear inside the patter. “I should recognize rain,” she’d scolded herself, watching her mind feebly scramble. ❍ Leaves blowing. (Dead ones flailing.) Donning the tone (the radio’s gentle blur). Her wipers smearing patterns like a child’s fingers might smear paint. A sad boy’s, let’s say. 78 �“Why are your pants are so tight?” he’d asked. His own were baggy. Way big on a skinny beanpole. Wild wind. (Dirty drops.) Grit sandwiched in the grooves. ❍ The man wore a maroon sweater. Grey curls fell to his shoulders. “Sorry about my cap,” he’d said, fiddling with its brim. “Without it my hair flies all over.” She’d looked at his thinning locks. They seemed worn. Something about the way he’d fingered the visor . . . the relationship between him and his hair wasn’t current with his hair, it said. He hiked. He spent a lot of time in nature. Yet unwizened, his body was that of a city person. 79 ��one long dragon’s-breath cloud ��One long dragon’s-breath cloud One long dragon’s-breath cloud in the happy after-rain sky. And egg-colored rocks. The swath of rugged brownbaked earth (pinecone-covered.) Hills relaxed. Trees ripe. “It’s a moon day!” she’d thought, lounging in her pose. She sped toward the sun. ❍ “Is that a bird or a leaf?” Her eyes had landed on the spruce outside the window. Tweet tweet. Tweet tweet. Branches imperceptibly moved. But what she saw — it could have been a leaf, a dead one dangling, then slowly falling. Fresh full air swept around her cushion. 83 �Thump! A pigeon at the glass. It had swerved, but apparently miscalculated. Or perhaps the pane was so clean that it hadn’t seen it. “Oh! Oh my!” students gasped. She’d gazed up. The bird flew off. That’s when she’d spied the fledgling (that had looked like a leaf) piping away. ❍ “Real shamrocks from your Irish Aries!” The note poked from beneath the pot exuberant with trifoliate leaves and fluffy, white, trumpet-shaped flowers. “Saint Patrick’s Day! Is it tomorrow?” She’d been focused on today — The Ides of March. Each flower had five or six petals that stood tall, then arched. Their backbends were of varying depths. Several curled forward. “Are they dehydrated?” The path toward back seemed to be forward. ❍ When the brahma granthi is pierced through by pranayama, a sort of happiness is experienced in the vacuum of the heart and the anahat sounds like various tinkling ornaments. 84 �When the rudra granthi is pierced and the air enters the seat of the Lord, then the perfect sound like that of a flute is produced. Just as a bee, drinking sweet juice, does not care for the smell of the flower, so the mind, absorbed in the nada, does not desire the objects of enjoyment. The mind, captivated in the snare of nada, gives up all its activity and, like a bird with clipped wings, becomes calm at once.1 ❍ Eastern breeze. Low sun. The soft sky softly (touching) sheltering dominions. She listened to the waves break against the sand. Her book had said that during the process of working through the knots (granthi ), the yogi listens to ten kinds of sounds: the chirping of birds, crickets, bells, conch, vina (Indian lute), mridanga (barrel drum), flute, pakhavaj (another kind of drum), trumpet and roar of a lion. The first three could be heard from her porch. “Maybe in the morning . . .” she optimistically thought as she laid the book down before bed. 1. Excerpts from The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a 1350 text by Svatmarama. 85 �❍ The radio blared. Traffic at a standstill. Peace-marchers had clogged every city artery. “The hill looks cold,” she’d mused, glancing at its shriveled buds. Splashes of pink crossed the iris sky. It’d turned dark. Then brilliantly sunny. 86 �Silver light Silver light. Plumped by rain. “Will it ever stop?” Traffic snaked around the bend. Sliver fans. A perfect spread from beneath the Saab. Tires, blades, surfing the road’s ever-engorged lakes. Like slalom. She remembered the grace, the fine flush of misty-blue ocean. ❍ Reckless wind. Dolphin clouds above the moon. A crane. A tramp. How many women? Copper blue. (She felt the night relax.) As if fast were color. ❍ Coo coo coo. Coo coo coo. The air fell silent. “I also like to camp alone.” She’d pictured herself trapped in the position. Would she have had the nerve? “Rats do it. He’d probably figured his hand was ruined anyway.” 87 �❍ From the vault, a tourniquet. (He thought he saw a colt.) Raunchy and available. You (they) so want life. Legs and face. A bundle of contorted FLING. Some wore skirts. In their jacquard weave, buxom dragonflies. ❍ Its muted howl (mouth skeletal). Jaw. Jawbone. Teeth. The bones of these animals. Yak or cow. The yogi’d said that if you wear them when you practice . . . Heat. They arouse the inner fire. Dim thread of pearl-colored shadow. ❍ The binding of her mother. She’d tossed and turned. I’m baby. Can I go? The tongue of a babe licking its calf. Rapture sets in. (Becomes habitual.) The memory of myself wailing as a calf. “Mama! Mama!” (I screamed to my calf mother.) 88 �Yellow rays Yellow rays. Dusty. Sober. Rain during the night had left the air crisp. With a wake of white, she’d thought. (She had a compelling urge to connect yesterday’s bleakness with today’s surreal steam.) Deer, black bear, bluebirds on slim alpine trees. ❍ “The internal alchemy of yoga results in the free flow of energy heard by the inner ear,” her teacher had summarized. “Asana regulates the body. Mudra channelizes prana. These are props. But they’re internal, natural. They foster strength.” His words were inspiring. Bzzzzzz . . . up her spine . . . like the little birds’ chirps. Cheep cheep cheep. Caw. Caw. Coo. ❍ Resilient cypress. The day had gone from dreamy (dove) to fearsome (noire) in about five minutes. Cars whizzed. A truck jumped to the right, almost causing an accident. Vehicles bounded, seemingly in streams, around her. 89 �❍ “The agni is a flame. You want to nurture it. You don’t want to snuff it out with cold, then throw a bunch of food at it.” He’d paused. “It’s like a candle. You treat it gently. And with respect. “I’ve never liked milk,” he’d suddenly veered off. (An old text had recommended it for yogis.) “But in India, it’s warm. Fresh from the tit. Nothing like we get here.” “What about goat milk?” a student queried. “Goats are skittish. Way too pitta for our practice.” “Soy milk?” “It comes from beans, so it’s not really milk, though it’s fine (if it’s not cold).” ❍ Chilly day. Sun bright but not warm. Her hoya gathered its rays. A sparrow near a fence was pecking, glancing, hopping about. “It’s risking a lot being out there alone,” she’d thought. (The other birds were hidden.) 90 �Though it was only 2:30, the light took on the shimmery glaze of late afternoon. ❍ A dark-skinned man, slowly walking, flicked the lilies’ slender foliage. He had no tools. “Workers usually take their breaks together,” she worried. Indeed, they had a whole room beneath her room, to gossip, eat, play. The place had a gay, comfortable feel. But if you addressed them in English, their eyes fled their bodies. ❍ Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent. She pictured the penitents’ foreheads. “Would they be black,” she’d wondered, “or marked Indian-style, with a colorful dot.” She remembered the god-intoxicated man who’d left his wife, children, job. For years he’d sat before a gravestone. So the villagers adopted him. Brought him tea. He was considered a kind of saint. 91 �❍ Pale light. Leaving behind its residue. Paler light leaving an even thinner film. Then full-fledged day. She’d watched. “Which nostril am I using?” Because she’d read that at sunrise and sunset both channels automatically open. “I love dirt. I love the smell of wet crumbly earth. And gasoline,” a person’d said. ❍ Night turned to dawn. The sky looked like cream. “Quick! From which nostril . . . ?” Sure enough, both nostrils imbibed the roasted air. “Name the qualities,” she’d schooled herself. But what struck her were the trees. Stark bare branches, densely patterned, poking every which way. 92 �The outer holds the inner “The outer holds the inner,” replied her teacher. (She had asked about the rule concerning handpositions in long holds.) “The outer holds the inner. The outer holds the inner,” she’d intoned monotonously. But she was afraid. She might forget. Indeed, she already had (forgotten), forcing her, this time, to strategically rephrase the question. A few weeks ago she’d asked, “Is there some rule? Which hand holds which wrist?” This time: “So the outer holds the inner? Right?” Which sounded as if she knew and was just checking. ❍ Porcelain sky, its reserve of wet. She huddled in her room. Hey! Tulips. (Wizened white bulbs.) Gladiolas stretched from the tippy tops of their stems. “It’s May!” she screeched, scrunching deeper under her covers. 93 �❍ “Bye, Gail!” She’d had slipped through the door at the end of a long class. He’d never bothered with salutations. Earlier he’d shouted: “Elbows in. Elbows in. You know better!” Usually he’d said, “Elbows in” in an exasperated tone. “The class was about legs. In case you hadn’t noticed.” (He’d been fielding questions.) She’d shut her eyes. She hadn’t. Everyone else laughed. If “they” hadn’t, their legs had, their chortling seemed to say. Where were her legs? “I mean why can’t I mentally put things together?” ❍ “Legs are about breathing. Work samokanasana. Your backbends, everything will get easier. “Lightness, remember, is not about weight. It’s the degree of freedom each part has with its neighbor. “There is no pose,” he’d added, suddenly. Then he, too, grew quiet. 94 �Puffy white cumulus. The horizon bald. Each blossomcloud, an enigma tongue. ❍ Brilliant May. (A swaying awning of trees.) A eucalyptus spur shot from the hip (not the chest nor the shoulder like its other brother branches). “It’s primed for pain,” she’d thought. (Ebullience instilled pity). “And her hydrangeas. One, two, three, pin-head rosettes.” “Zestful leaves, pungent-green. Greenhouse green (which I find unnerving). Like I want to explain, ‘You don’t have to prove anything.’” ❍ Her raw voice. His harsh retorts. Their squirrelly Russian through the suddenly-opened door. Then, just as suddenly (one of them had closed it) lopped off. I get this picture of him following her around. Her shrieking, him mousily making amends (though not really feeling it, not at all convinced that he’d done the wrong thing). 95 �On some level she knows this. She screams, but she’s not saying, “Why don’t you just fucking be direct with me.” ❍ Splats of rain through a ceiling of taupe cloud. “O radiant sun! You were just here!” She cruised. The red-green trees, drip drop drip, looking sulky by the roadside. “I couldn’t see,” the teacher had begun. “There were parts of your body that I wanted to check, but your clothes . . .” “Thank you,” squeaked the blonde woman who had just demonstrated how to teach Ustrasana and Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Her rosy-yellow sweater hugged her waist and flared, calf-length cut-offs. ❍ “Which would be best for a child’s room?” They were pawing through a rack of indigenous Chinese paintings. “This one,” she’d answered. “It’s lively, simple. The naïve design is easy to grasp.” “The one with swans! I could see it in her room.” She’d pulled the others forward, exposing it to full view. 96 �Its bottom edge looked as if it had been torn from something with a ruler. ❍ “I have a question.” The woman waved her hand. “It’s about sleep. I have trouble getting up. I want to do my practice and yet, in the morning, especially when it’s dark, I just can’t. I can’t drag myself out of bed.” “Do you have children?” (The yogi’s voice was tender.) “I have three. The youngest is two.” “Practice in bed. No, I’m serious,” he’d responded to the class’s hilarity. “You can do all your breathing exercises lying on your back, under your covers. For a mother, it’s good. You shouldn’t get up. (Listen to your body.)” 97 �Spring evening with mild breeze Spring evening with mild breeze. Coolish. Spaceship clouds in the powdery sky, speedy but immobile like rockets in a painting. Her gardenia, yellow now. Its still-tight fist’s fresh-from-the-pail purity. ❍ “Your skin. It’s so yellow. Do you know why?” Large cat eyes gazed at her lovingly. “It’s not my liver. I’ve had that checked.” “The Vedic texts say that very high pittas have an orange cast to their skin. It’s beautiful to see. I’ve only seen a few.” She tucked her feet beneath her sari. That was when she’d noticed the green spot on her forehead. At the ajna chakra. (The point of Christ Consciousness.) ❍ Dazzling day. A radiant sun splattered itself about. The scent of jasmine rose from a curtained window. “Boil one cup of rice in four cups of water. Keep boiling till the water becomes chalky. Then, take just the water 98 �(throw away the rice), add salt, pepper, and parsley if you like. Each day at noon drink two ounces. “It’s called peya,” she’d continued. “There are seven kinds. And there are seven steps before your agni will be able to handle the food your body requires. “Your vata pulse is better.” She’d bent forward to feel it. A small rosewood mala and silver snake separately hugged her wrists. ❍ “Look! The moon. Rising in the eastern sky. It’s so pale. (The sky that is.)” She’d tried to detect the not-full part. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow is a full moon day.” She knew that after a full moon things could be chaotic. She wondered about before. Or right before. “Like it’s almost tomorrow,” she’d thought. The moon looked round, white, clean. “We’re going to war. In two days. The President just made the announcement,” someone had said. “Two days will be one day after the full moon,” she’d calculated. 99 �❍ “We needed that rain,” her teacher remarked as the morning dawned with a precocious eager edge. He’d flung open the window. Cool, lovely-smelling air flooded the studio. “Baby birds are brash,” she’d thought as branch to branch they flit. They reminded her of insects. Black and a little erratic. “They’re feisty (baldly bold).” Like her hydrangeas, having been clipped. Her hoya too flung a long wing westward. A wild unwieldy brazen stick. Poker bare. While the little birds’ brashness seemed hollow, her hoya’s was more sedate. Its trajectory (however sheathed in shadow) still was its trajectory, whereas fledglings — well, there’s an imprint certainly but less circumscribed (constrained). ❍ Daisies in the sun. “Hi!” they waved. Bunches bowed. “Is it summer yet?” Because there were signs. A jaunty smell. Or dog jumping for a ball with height and rough twist of its ribs. 100 �A gentle coo nudged her from sleep. “Sunday. (Right-leg-in day.) Tuesday, Saturday, Sunday, correct?” Because on Monday, he’d said, “Right leg first.” “It’s Monday,” she’d commented (not in a threatening way, but just noticing). “Don’t be rigid. We’ll be crossing both today. Mix it up!” 101 �Come over here “Come over here.” Her teacher occasionally nestled himself in a tightly drawn circle. He’d begun with torqued spines. “Even the suggestion of correct flow of energy helps the body push through to that flow,” he encouraged, contorting his arms into knots and then freeing them. “Like a hose. Water gushes in a stream when it’s loose and unencumbered. “You can’t address the dysfunction until the body’s defenses are down,” he’d added. ❍ “It works better than Ex-Lax, better than psyllium,” said the man who’d probably (from what she saw of his body) never been constipated. “Women’s guts don’t work like that,” a student had retorted when he’d suggested that an earlier dinner would facilitate an earlier morning poop. His colon no doubt emptied itself regularly. It certainly didn’t bulge as did most of the colons in the predominantly female class. They’d been in sarvangasana. “Put your legs in padmasana,” he’d begun. “Bracing your right hip joint in 102 �your right palm, lower your legs and twist so that your right knee is as close to your elbow as possible.” Like the gods’ (her thoughts galloped) — their profiled shoulders revolving into thighs, calves, feet. The arches in their feet. ❍ “Instep! Instep! Gail, please! Savasana rotation, then instep.” (He’d made the same correction before.) She’d been thinking about clouds. As she’d driven east, a pale blue layer of light had settled above a dark low mountain mass. The sky, coal-black, swished about in just-make-out-able zigzags. “Where is the moon?” she’d wondered. (It had just been full.) A plane wandered through, beeping yellow lights. ❍ Her window yawned. The sweet smell from the day. “Evening practice needs to be vigorous. Wind builds up through the course of the afternoon. It’s toxic.” The yogi paused. “When I say ‘wind’ I mean the element air. From cars, chimneys, air conditioners — and from dealings with 103 �things and people. Fumes leave a residue that is poisonous to the system. Our bodies needs to burn it. No ‘exhaust-ion’. (No seriously.) “You all know what I mean, don’t you? Airports, cars, arguments. It’s stale. Asphyxiating.” ❍ Buoyant black over buoyant white. Night hung heavy. Branches through the bog. A sharp mist wagged its blandness. Three trees (were they cedars?) Stately, tall, stickstraight and centered in her cabin’s portal. “How did they get so perfect,” she’d wondered, staring at their silhouettes. ❍ Last flush of light. The hill. Was it saddened? “For you my darling.” Pristine. Crisp. The gardenia floated in an oval bowl of water. “Do flowers carry time?” (She’d remember the smell, not the occasion.) “Wind does. Clouds and shadows also,” she’d thought. 104 �❍ “Let’s just be together. Let’s enjoy ourselves as a family,” said Clint Eastwood’s second wife. Wives, kids, kids from other women, their partners — she’d gathered and welcomed all. It made sense. If she loved Clint Eastwood, she’d love his child, nevermind the particular womb from which it had emerged. Women carry babies (bring other women’s eggs to term). What could be more American? “So let’s say he dies.” (Playing this out.) “As a young mother, she may be most consoled by the child of someone with whom she’d otherwise have nothing to do. Or by that person. Or by that person’s husband.” ❍ Wetlands (a canopy) spread beside the water. Yellow turf (its undulant creek) whiplashed and hard. The bony core of loop (eyelet, coil, whorl). Each steep wheel wandering away from itself. “Is it quicksand? What’s underneath,” she’d wondered, gazing visually seaward. Or landfill? The expanse was huge. 105 �Tweet . . . . . Tweet . . . . . Tweet . . . . . Tweet . . . . . Chiiiiirrrrr . . . . . Chiiiiirrrrr . . . . . Yu, yu cried the deer nibbling southwood in the field. Summer was lost. Where had it gone she wondered. She turned over in the dark. Gangs of dogs and ducks and geese gnawed the dirty hill. ❍ She wedged around a bend. Sapphire veins spanned the horizon. “Is it a moon day?” Her diary had inscribed a tiny black circle. Though she was aware of feeling embarrassed . . . that her knowledge of the moon derived from a diacritical mark. “Saturday. Saturday’s the new moon. Today’s Thursday,” her teacher’d responded. 106 �❍ “Some yogis suggest placing one’s consciousness on the right side of the heart,” he’d continued. “Physically it’s the spot where the heartbeat begins.” She glanced at the sky. Sheep grazed on the blue-green bluff. Plough cattle, pear trees, languished in some duckweed sprout. Silver-studded riffs ensconced a mountain tip. ❍ The man stood like a tree. “I’m waiting,” said his muscles, twisted, and at rest. His blanket shuffled in a breeze. Softly the chimes. A few birds. A cat. ❍ Timid dawn, approaching, back-pedaling. CAW CAW CAW. CAW CAW CAW. Creeping through a cantaloupe-colored rise. Sloppy birds (with their non sequitur purge). 107 �A squirrel darted, stopped, listened, scampered off. ❍ “I smell anise.” A sweet, licorice-seeming, odor wafted through the windows. She glanced up. Coreopsis, impatiens hugged the mountain grass. “The symbol Om (pronounced A-U-M),” began a student. Its curves are states of mind. As we do gomugasana let’s chant Om three times,” she’d encouraged. But the sounds were hoarse. Voices unsteady. The backs of peoples’ throats were closed, making a whimper instead of a round, full chorus. ❍ Soft birds. The chilly morning dour. “Where are the deer?” she wondered. Indeed a deer was in the painting of Yajnavalkya and his wives Gargi and Katyayini. The latter stood next to him holding an infant. Gargi, two children, and a doe were at his knees. The doe was yanking on Katyayini’s shawl. Or was it the leg of her infant? It was hard to tell from the faded picture. 108 �❍ Among Yajnavalkya’s preceptors was the great sage Vaisampayana. Once walking in the forest, he’d killed a child by mistake. He’d summoned his disciples, told them to perform the atonement. Yajnavalkya said, “Sir, I will do it. The other students are not very efficient.” “How can you speak ill of my students, your peers. You have no place in my gurukula. Leave the ashram immediately after returning all of my teachings.” Yajnavalkya then vomited all the teachings. The other students, not wanting to waste the precious knowledge, took the form of tittiri birds, and ate it. 109 �How it eats the evening light “How it eats the evening light!” she’d thought, gaping through the screen at the hillside’s sunflower grasses. Wind cropped the low-lying trees. From afar, the summit, a gathering of ruby studs. Caw caw caw. The sky darkened. Shrieks, more porous, hedged the flailing shadows. His Muslim sheen (the color, gritty, then blended so that beneath the smooth, monochromatic surface . . . ) “He’s always been the altar beneath the cathedral,” she’d said. ❍ Turkey in the straw. Of taste (the fleeting glimpse) that morning in Florida. The wafer was chocolate. (Raspberry + dirt.) The smell of day. Early but not crack-of-dawn early. Having just rubbed the unctuous sandalwood oil clockwise around her throat. Turkey in the straw. Pale light. Everything airborne poised. 110 �The shock (the Mother’s divine breath?). “In a jiffy. I’ll be there in a jiffy,” she’d said, but stopped, having just . . . But it left. Like a ghost, sloughing through its old terrain . . . Turkey in the straw. The aura of her. The old, steady yet hovering-on-thetentative, modulated voice of precise intelligence. “Is that why her cough disturbs you?” “Holding a stone is like cradling a galaxy.” (She slowly pulled the band from around her brown curly hair.) Her mauve sweater, flat chest. The outline of an undergarment. ❍ A bell or two. The bleak clear rain. It’s hard (the water). Not like the tropics where you feel almost petted. Listlessly she stood ogling the birds. 111 �As she began to sing to the swarming mass around her, a brisk wind whipped her long black braids in stinging lashes across her face. ❍ The Jyotir Vidya actually draws to herself those people she wants to possess her by attracting them to a guru who already possesses her. The aspirant first tests the guru ( for knowledge and teaching skill), then the guru tests the aspirant for fitness to study the science. Once satisfied that the aspirant is worthy, the guru initiates the long years of oral training. The Jyotir Vidya (through the guru) herself directs the disciple’s studies. Then, after the mentor ignites the Jyotir Vidya within the student, it slowly settles into the disciple’s mind, and thereafter personally guides the fledgling through the path of divination. Disciples who follow that path sufficiently far become able to comprehend the spirit of the astrological rules on their own. Their every use becomes a way to honor Jyotish. ❍ There are five styles of Jyotish, her book continued. The rishis of one, Nadi Jyotish, had grown so adept they could generate the horoscopes of people not yet born. The gods, alarmed, burned their collection, though a few remnants survived. 112 �Each Nadi collection is reputed to contain the horoscopes of only those individuals destined to consult it. When complete, a Nadi reading traditionally consists of four parts: the first, behave phala, deals with career, marriage, children, health and finances. The second, yoga khanda, gives precise predictions, usually involving political, social or scientific attainments. The third, karma khanda, pertains to specific occurrences in a previous life (misdeeds for the most part), whose effects create obstructions in the current one. The last, shanti khanda, prescribes remedial measures to mitigate or nullify any lingering undesirable results accruing from past-life misdemeanors. A curious fact, the author warns, is that while strikingly precise regarding one’s past, predictions of the future rarely achieve the same success at detail, though they are broadly accurate. ❍ “Baba, can I sweep your room?” (His books sat in a corner gathering dust, ants, mice droppings.) “If it will give you pleasure.” He himself hadn’t noticed the dirt. 113 �She pictured the little girl for whom magic had seemed enough. Night landed like a tarp on the city. 114 �Flowers in a cast Flowers in a cast. “I kept forgetting,” said the woman. Old light. Waiting to peter out. Its last vigorous flush? Before that . . . ❍ Think of fire. (Our duplex was on an incline.) A bird soared. Its arrow-shaped tail yellow (plaid). How many sleeves veiled the color of your eyes? Sheep grazed. A smoggy bedlam. ❍ “Hey! There’s a fire. Look! On the second floor.” Collar of agony. He wanted it to glow. The old woman’s hand. Her wrist, the marmas . . . She knew that in snow country, snow often brought warmth, or at the very least, warmer weather. ❍ Red yarn. Bucketfuls. Soft like melting butter. 115 �A persuasion of color, though the woman’d said, “I want orange. I love orange.” Looking for orange. Finding brown and green. Its moment. ❍ A man watches t.v. Says “This is life. This is real life.” But he gets tired. His kid shrieks. (He can barely get up from the sofa.) She’d been walking through the hall. Old leather shoes, a pair, outside a door. One slumped on its side. The other — pointy-toed and black with a small old-fashioned heel — had clearly been kicked off. “I’ll just talk to the shoes,” she’d thought. “I’ll apologize to the shoes.” ❍ “So think, move. What’s to be afraid?” Slow motions ascribe the hesitancy of her life. “Well, like yesterday. I got up and took a walk. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go but it was early. Cool.” 116 �She enters a room, then hovers near the doorway. “When I got home I took another walk. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do.” ❍ So sequencing. Principle one: know where you’re headed. (Her teacher’s voice, stern.) There’s pose/counter-pose. Or synergy. Each position has its specific effect on the muscles, organs, glands. Grouping them together enhances this effect. Or you can organize a sequence around a seed asana. “There’s only one backbend, one forward bend, one twist,” he’d quoted his teacher. Hanuman is a seed asana. Vary it, then lead into abstractions. (He seemed exhausted.) ❍ Skinny sapling. Paws against the day. Blinding sun before 6:00 a.m. The sky, a rainbow of early mauves. Later, the birds. Cheep cheep. Silence. Their frail jejune calls. 117 �❍ Arc of cold. It browned the dowdy hill. Her brown gardenia tilting. She stared at the woody rounds. One petal had turned cocoa. Another, buttery, elephant-hide yellow. Honey-colored in its youth, the tight revolving core, lustrous with glee, had intensified. A basset hound in the elevator reeked from flowers as he splayed at the ankles of his mistress. 118 �Blue out of blue Blue out of blue. A man slips. Looks down a sheer cliff. He grasps an edge, an indentation in the cliff, and is able, with extreme effort, to pull himself back. He knows there’s water somewhere. The sun. The call of a bird. I’m asleep. What do they want? ❍ “I woke up this morning and just wanted to go home,” said the yogi, far from his native Australia. Some shiny-scalped men were swabbing the asphalt. “The feet are like fish,” the yogi explained. “When you stand on them, you should feel you’re floating on water.” He’d picked up his foot to demonstrate how, from the bottom, it looked fishlike. A breeze barely stirred even an exposed (outermost) leaf. ❍ “I like your t-shirt. Is it a snake?” (A voice across the class.) 119 �It was black. A tan thread spiraled up one sleeve then spun at the chest into an animal’s head. A second smaller design hovered near the shoulder. “It’s a panther. I bought it in Singapore,” he responded. Both arms had bangles and his wrist, a mala of the same white bone. ❍ “Empty your bladders.” (After talk. Before asana. Half the students rose.) “Sit on your heels,” he’d requested of the rest. Then, just as the room seemed full again, “Is it safe to walk to the bathroom barefoot?” Frail tree. Its branches drooped. Caw. Caw. Caw. (The gray lapse of dawn.) ❍ “It’s the wind that moves. Not your body. “The eye and the ear use things up.” Earlier he’d said, “Inhale.” She’d inhaled. Then exhaled. Inhaled, exhaled. Inhaled, exhaled. Then he’d said, “Exhale.” 120 �A German shepherd from the next-door compound wagged its tongue as if it were hot. ❍ Young larynx. Old larynx. Squawk squawk squawk. (Sparrows jabbered away.) “Once I saw some hatchlings get into a tussle. (Dripping, bleating, slapping the grass.) “Something had startled them so they’d raced quickly from their grazing spot, then settled for another near an ice-covered river.” “Do deer eat cats?” (At the pool, that blast of voice.) ❍ Denizen of night. It told in the swampland. How many berries hidden behind the oak? Borrowed from winter, light sat at the edge (just) of the darkening day. Hot light. The kind that makes an array of aura. Tooth of a storm sideways through the brick. ❍ Brutal water. (Streets leaking sand.) 121 �Hillside poppy. Its halo (sanctified) downwards in the gully. Copper petals basked. “Look. The sky’s bloated (all hollowed out).” A noxious haze settled on the heather. Pink. Or not even pink. 122 �❍ 123 ��Are those daisies? “Are those daisies? “Sprightly stems waved cheerful blossoms. The flowers, growing wild, were firmly rooted, tall. Prickly sky. A dwarfed day. “A poor day,” she’d thought. Pastry clouds tossed. Bells broke the evening silence. ❍ Slowly . . . slowly . . . soft (impending) haze. Lavish plumes of color. Little hoops crisscrossed the lane. Which the birds jumped. Teeny birds. Not cute. Peep peep peep. Peep peep peep. 125 �❍ A large black crow had landed on her tree. (She called it hers. It faced her window.) Its swiveled beak poked the corn-colored fronds. Mellow bees. (She was on the patio.) Whorls of cold through tinselly air. After-beams in a deck of clouds (black, fan-flared, like the background of a Noh drama). ❍ A dreidel spun. “I want to play,” said the man. “Don’t you ever have down time?” She’d been reading about emotions. When suppressed, they’d crystallize (accumulate in the feet). “Café glacé and two cakes please.” She’d shifted her child from her backpack to a chair. The chair wobbled and the child began to cry. “We’ll walk, yeh? It’s shabbos,” said the woman wiping crumbs from her still-whimpering toddler. ❍ A viscid sky. The hill a ream of drip. Men in jeans (cowboy-style dress) rode horses over a roof. 126 �Just at the edge they’d skidded to a halt. Then one of the horses didn’t. It humped its back as it floated to the ground, elastically landing and continuing across the field. ❍ “Oh my god!” she’d gasped. The stallions galloped with ever-increasing speed. A slew of fillies copied the act. “Oh my god! Oh my god! Look at those animals!” (Their nubby infused color.) Black, white, stately (regal) magnificent (piebald) stallions. ❍ One horse (alternately) mounted another as if it (the horse) were riding the other bareback. “Oh my god!” she’d exclaimed again. The rain had stopped. Dew sparkled outside the tent. Small trees bearded with lichen, down trees in various states of decay, and old logs speckled with moss lay sedately in beds of deer fern. 127 �❍ See the mountain snow. And the stately cedar blazing in the sun? (Sounds from below were niggardly, without zest.) What if it rises? What if, like floodwater, it creeps up over the sill? The skull (the rape) the centuries of fog whose shroud huddled just outside her window. So weep. But she couldn’t. ❍ A small woman with mottled skin knitted, talked. “Please don’t turn on the light,” she’d said. Then after a pause, “Knitting makes me so happy. I don’t know why I stop. “One strand is cotton. The other chenille. I started it ages ago.” In the cool, dim night, its fresh peach shade. 128 �Will it rain? “Will it rain?” It smelled like rain. Screech. Screech. Screech. Caw. Caw. Caw. “I watch water,” commented the woman. Lupine blued the earth (its foliage cloud-coiled and covered with dew). A cool breeze gently swabbed the duckweed. ❍ The woman had a child to whom she’d offered her breast. He’d cried. He didn’t want it. Grass, shrubs, birds. But the people were scholars. Gardeners did the yard work. Blue upon blue. Streaks of white like fat. Double-mint. That taste in the sight of water. ❍ Saplings shrieked. Braced by stilts, they’d wobbled in the wind. Heat-crazed kids swerved off the road. Toddler-trees (with one pole-crutch) seemed so mature, so accustomed to the elements. 129 �General leafiness, shadiness, waving of boughs in the breeze. ❍ “It’s due to break,” someone’d mentioned. With everyone using fans, she’d kept expecting the power to go out. A moth (silver-hooded) languished on a cloth whose coarsely-embroidered rat bowed beneath Ganesh. “There’s that wolf! The animal bounded . . . like a rocking horse,” she’d thought. Sun braised its cinnabar fur. ❍ The little settled body, twitch twitch (like a dreaming cat). Netted wings slim and refined. Earlier she’d watched a butterfly. Its leaf-of-choice had faded skinny veins. Twirling, swirling. It hadn’t seemed at all tired. ❍ A piano whizzed from the floor below as darkness, in its cairn, sank over the lake. 130 �Calciferous. Void. Blood notes from her dream. Seated prettily near the olive woman’s hands. Fuselage of time hovering like a train. A feline fishing (its spot of red ransacked). ❍ Tributaries (plunk plunk plunk). Wandering caves of fingers. Phalanges they call them. (An octave toward her grave.) Darklings danced to the tawdry keys. Night fell. It was real. Radiance bled from their innermost shrine of feet. ❍ Dirty reeds poked the sky. “Daddy, that man looks strange.” “Places affect me,” remarked the boy. (He washed windows.) Simple cloth and sometimes a band around her hair. Or she’d just let it hang, brushing it away now and then. 131 �❍ The Japanese dad held his daughter’s fist. He bent to the side to hear her better. Stars covered her leotard, all except the bottom. Tendrils from a fellow. (They’d lingered in the doorway.) Squishy night with its bit of pink. Its perky imago. 132 �Is that rain? “Is that rain?” Lush drops in what had been cricketland. “It smells like water. It smells like grass,” she’d corrected herself. Alone in her garden (near its melon-colored bulbs). “Grass that’d been watered by summer rain,” she concluded. ❍ It differed from winter rain. Or spring rain. Even autumn rain which was cold (starting to be hard). Summer rain was soft. Bing . . . bing . . . her bells (softly). Once there was a bell. It was so soft, so soft. “Is that a bell?” She forgot she was in savasana. It was early (dawn). She’d gazed out over a meadow. ❍ COCKA-DOODLE-DOO! COCKA-DOODLE-DOO! A beautiful rooster full of brio and spirit. Lavender air gushed through the open window. 133 �The path through the cornfield ended at a store. “She looks sad,” someone noted, having entered the hovel and glanced around. ❍ “Look at the sky!” She’d turned toward the voice. “Did you see it? You must see it!” A small woman madly poked a bobbing finger east. She’d squatted in a chair. Several strands of gray drooped from her parted braids. Still-twinkling stars. Their redness through the swallowed cirrus. ❍ “We’re more than girls,” neighed the woman. Plucky cheongsam. As a child she was indolent. Rather, say, she was a great reader. And sassy. Tongue like a cleaver. ❍ A jogger, a walker, a panoply of peacock-blue. The trope of her. Her wild acidity of doctrine. Curlews and finch. (A blitz of frothy bees.) 134 �The native danced. At seventy-eight his penis was sore. (He wasn’t used to white people.) ❍ Her skin had eyes. You felt them peering. Radical green. (The blue chunk green.) The slope of his penis. It fell longways. Not on the bed but on the bedside. Letting its sword run rampant. ❍ Sea-faring fro. To and . . . Umbilical cord slippery with grease. Each night when she had to pee . . . crawling down the skinny stilts. Addled birds. (They’d heard the bugle.) ❍ “Needles,” she’d said. (Her tattooed face.) Deeply telling my green green history. Seashells. Conch shells. Their long strand from the ocean’s bust. Only a parrot howled and she was discovered. 135 �Had it rained? Had it rained? She couldn’t tell. It looked like it hadn’t, yet the trees, the earth, held rain’s memory. In their flesh. (They’d known rain.) Mist egged this out. Swoosh! Pigeons! A flock from the grimy streets. She pictured rain swimming in the air molecules. ❍ Lying in the dark, the window above her cracked. Bits of water had accumulated in the curtain. Droplets dribbled down her neck. Then it’d stopped. The sky turned shell. As she sidled up the path, flouncy skirt awry, her brimmed, beribboned hat had sailed off like a frisbee. ❍ The curio shop had been on a narrow lane next door to a small (maybe six-boothed) eatery. That’s where she’d seen the statue. Tall, slim, gouged with the craft-person’s tool. Thin strokes of green edged the deity’s robe. 136 �“Probably it’s Kannon.” (But she vaguely remembered being told that it wasn’t.) ❍ “Sorry. I speak English.” The young Korean smiled, lavishly displaying the bill. “My daughter. She speak.” (More smiles. Squirrelly motions.) Rubbing (dreaming) as a way of paying attention. ❍ The day shed light along with heat. The path, too, cobbled, beflowered, lifted its chest toward the hills. Spine humped, fronds spread, clumps of decay nestled under tips. The old palm stiff, barely flexed in the evening breeze. ❍ “What’s that?” she’d asked. They’d been upstairs changing into something cooler. “Shush,” averred her grandmother. 137 �Outside the window two red-winged blackbirds were quarreling. “Well what are they, grandma?” ❍ Words formed the evening. (She lit candles.) Whole notes strewn across the sea. Once there were pirates. They’d ransacked the ship. A stand of trees screened the ocean view (though she could hear a wave whispering to itself ). 138 �The moon looks drunk! “The moon looks drunk!” She stared at the robust ball. “What happened to its head?” (A dense, laborintensive structure.) It was Monday. A moon day would be Friday. First light. The bird’s broad voice. Its notes as we were. ❍ Ever-so-slightly rolling his left shoulder skyward. Thin beige blankets engorged him like a bun. A bulky body. Which he’d tried to rouse. “I’m so sorry to have disturbed you,” she’d muttered. She’d squatted, waiting on the other side of the car. Traces of day not yet splattered toward the west. ❍ A silky sun slipping, tipping. “There’s that man.” (At the university’s green front gate). Beds of moss. A dim morning folded in on itself He’d inhale. Air waffled through his chest. Now full. Now billowy. Now flat against his ribs. Dark-skinned. Agile. He smelled of patrouli. 139 �❍ “Would you say he was a short man?” “In stature maybe. (How callous the bearing of any deed.)” “Yet he took a wife. Who had a sweet face. A very sweet face.” He’d be confused. She’d bend over his shoulder, gently helping (trying to understand). ❍ That day she had on jeans. Which resisted her thighs as she’d tugged on the flowers. Stern yet soft. Her skin still slept while her body readied the room. Near a cubby-altar lay a mat. She’d angled hers perpendicularly. Students trailed in. (The girl, in her efforts, clipping, stripping, arranging the stalks in a vase.) ❍ Tall and lean a body crept. She’d appear (evaporate with the dew). 140 �Beeps of lights. (Firefly light.) On again, off again. “She’s Alice all right.” Tender, guileless. Having no history. ❍ Charred breeze carried night. Fading light. Fast fading. Waaaaaaang. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang. “It drives me crazy,” someone’d said. A Nigerian woman (in poofy Bermuda shorts) perched in the moon in a difficult half squat. 141 �Where’s the light “Where’s the light?” She’d glanced at the clock. The still-black dawn seemed as sluggish as her body. Miniature limes on her avuncular tree drooped from a stubby stem. “Whoops! There’s a person!” A passerby, brief-cased and jacketed lurched forward chaotically. She slowed down. As a bow (sort of). In lieu of other forms of acknowledgment. ❍ Flux of trees. (Dimpled birds.) Winter sounds. Making ready. A thick band of rubber bound three spindly trunks together. One jay squawked. The suited woman hurried along. Two mailboxes huddled together. “Like an old married couple,” she’d thought. 142 �❍ The sudden lull, then full-blooded chirps. How do they know? I mean how do they KNOW. A coarse-throated call roiled through the glen. Queer birds. Scream and rest. Close your eyes. Listen to the bleat, the after-the-storm hollow. ❍ “What’s that noise?” She couldn’t tell. “Hey!” A man, wildly hitting her window. “Where’s a gas station?” she’d yelled back, but her window was up and he’d scrunched his shoulders. Narrow skull. Bowls for cheeks. She’d looked more closely. The shock of his skinniness. ❍ Naked sky. The bare non-color. A blackbird blinked, turned its rubbery head. “Hey man. Are you cool? Are you cool? Huh?” “Yeh. Yeh. I’m cool. I’m fine, thanks.” 143 �❍ “Somethin’ about me . . . I mean so early in the morning . . . I could be a crazy person. “I don’t wanna be a looney bin,” he’d added, squeezing his thighs, wrapping one shin tightly around the other. Her t-shirt had a hole. Through rising sun, her ruddy flesh. Frogs croaked from a rivulet. ❍ A glove. A box. The throat of so many books. Pigeons rascally. (The embers of his conflagration.) Boston Irish svelte. Devour the words of its Italian neighbors. A tavern, a pool hall — within the radius of himself. 144 ��Once There Was Grass was designed and set into type by Linda Davis at Star Type, Berkeley, using ITC Bodoni Twelve. This typeface was originally designed by Giambattista Bodoni, in Parma, Italy, in the early 19th century and redrawn for modern use by Sumner Stone, Holly Goldsmith, and Jim Parkinson. The type was digitized by the ITC type foundry. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Once there was grass Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2004 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 972611533 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_021 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 152 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/4151789245992917de5983e04e66e579.pdf 6e6188f8fcea5b244245abce3849ed7a PDF Text Text old dri’s lament dri (Tibetan): a female yak �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry The Coper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �old dri’s lament Gail Sher Q night crane press 2007 �Copyright 2007, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. isbn: 978–0–9794721–0–7 �For Brendan ��To Jaime de Angulo One of the most outstanding writers I have ever encountered w il liam car los w il liams ��contents month of the groundhog 1 month of the squirrel 21 month of the wild turnips 45 month of the deer running 87 ��month of the groundhog ��old dri’s lament without a head I am I am the throat without a song I am I am the song I am the song without a head I live between two mountains 3 �you croak young frog as I dig for eatable roots you croak young frog as I dig up hairy rotten ones cage of ribs carcass ablaze sky full of frogs I suck your bones 4 �hawk o hawk questing the remuda on a sway the bird will give I am a bird you neigh you shrill toss your head I am the mare you smell in the fog in the pasture I am your bowed neck when the north wind rushes over the moor I am your mane fying 5 �I a pigeon strut along the wharf by pails of fresh fsh I stroll looking like an old babushka at market through stalls I wend as evening glows waltz as the band warms to its ragtime a very large man hands me a cup of milk 6 �parrot whom I hate red sun bird I saw you gaze at noon’s ferce fre red sun bird it is mine you take from it and I suffer eagles, vultures eat out your hearts like the Buddhas tigers tore with their teeth o bird of peregrine hips 7 �I am a face beneath the hills I dig for roots throw them in my pack a face I am all wrinkles and bent propped with a stick I come out o’ the hills pass a bit of town buy some grub from a half-wit o child of stone axe before-the-white-man boy 8 �I am a bead I am a head button of glass on string in a row are my sisters loud and colorful rise up girls make a teepee make a pouch stare at the sun streaming in the door and toward the hills out in the distance 9 �hey, the man broad, squat and dark, very dark a big man clear sky blue big sky and big clear street sagebrush jackrabbits juniper gnarled, rough but the valley spreads wide hey mountain, are you there 10 �so I walk into town high desert blue sky juniper wood smoking I see Indians (Paiutes) standing along the street hey I say but they . . . nothing it’s clear and cool almost fall really beautiful weather so I feel good 11 �shotgun rabbit I am and there’s another one hey, grab your gun the sagebrush is tall I am a tall bird hunting rabbit with my pea-cock I make circles in the dirt attack sharply rabbit fat is warming rabbit skin is warming rabbit fesh is warming 12 �stupa of mind’s darkness I am a feld a fast-fowing river back and forth I walk where two paths spread I choose the right one but a huge man blocks me go away huge man glimmering in the distance are butter lamps are giant people one, two, three heads I eat sun I lay in grass a lizard scurries in the heat 13 �lexicon of stallions with the gift of foot we stole you back a trident through my heel emerges through my head the word in my wrist rears from the pyre my memory of that one spring 14 �giving & taking my greed is an owl I chase it away with my breath it carries happiness the problems of others lands on my selfshness which sinks to the earth I am pliable and soft 15 �rain on the redwoods drip drip drip blue jays’ caw-for-the-morning subdued wood-rats vanish squirrels stay in their holes drip drip drip 16 �winter rain and the trees just stand there and the grass shivering at the window aren’t you cold trees? crows, aren’t you freezing? 17 �poker still startled (you seem) on the path by the baby maple skin soft crevices shallow in a swirl of air belly pumping fast till my slow breath fuses with your heart 18 �nip nip from my loins a hornets’ nest a great big hornets’ nest all the hornets streaming in and out I watch pretty soon I throw rocks come out hornets fy after me, bite me 19 �sky burial o wall of skulls vast wall of skulls wash this body shave its head seat it shrouded in white cloth 20 �month of the squirrel ��nagaland under blue air I fell into the river under blue air I heard the winter crane when the p’hurba seared her hand I pulled it from the boulder then Buddha became a mountain 23 �licking jiaka in the dawn, licking jiaka in the dawn, on a warm spring day of blooming fowers in a mountain by the sea a rivulet runs a baby frog croaks then freezes (I am not near) in sun its green skin jumps curious, I approach still still, primordially quiet I wake, immediately clear about something 24 �caves of increasing goodness when it rains a beautiful fringe of water drips across my roof when it rains stones shift crushing monks to death o dragon from the sea judge not my murderer for the jonquils are out swallow him with the sky 25 �o woman bird you wag your tail treading the cement the gray bird frantic in the heat of day (stunned) young thing a gull drops . . . lifts . . . (something is in its beak) 26 �red fags red fags futtering red fags of the thirteen holy mountains at the Yellow River’s source Anyemaqen, the god watches over the Hundred Lakes moon gates, decorated eaves, little bridges over fowing water temples on hills overlooking the water overlooking the Yangtze-delta’s greens 27 �on your departure fve tea-boiled eggs two pieces of sesame cake pumpkin seeds sweet-sour turnip slivers a fask of tea inside a shoulder bag of Suzhou silk 28 �still-good butter no longer fresh but inexpensive and not dirty old ma-pa, you made our family rich old ma-pa, we don’t care what you did before you came the lama kindly sent you to my maternal grandmother because you are smart our family has prospered and made a name for itself in our locality old ma-pa, you made our family rich old ma-pa, we don’t care what you did before you came 29 �dead grass on the hill yellow hill foppy with faded grasses I look out and see you all slumped over dead grass on the hill once green in the rain tall and thick with dandelions and fowers resilient even lyrical where is your song what happened to your medoly 30 �“give me that hoe” said the boy to his sister who only cared about her rabbit since he didn’t she pretended not to hear “I have long ears” she sang in the squeaky voice of an animal “pass me the hoe! how many times do I have to ask” 31 �wind-washed on the high plateau mountain snow deeper than a tall man mountain snow I cannot walk inside I walk make quick headway to the village swallow steamy noodles fecked with meat mutant me me less-than-half o snow can’t you see I’m desperate 32 �turnsol of the badlands black of dawn queen queen of the black essence whisper to me I wander at night through the holy-mesa’s thorns there a demoness spirit untamed . . . an old man begins speaking of a strange experience piles of corpses handsome, fragrant, sleek fll me, dancing at the bottom of tall mountains 33 �a boulder fell from the sky a boulder fell from the sky no one around . . . nothing up the cliff don’t go near the cliff, warned a woodcutter for a leopard, having birthed a litter, Is keeping them there I walk near the cliff I run near the cliff the leopard with her kittens the leopard with her kittens just as the woodsman had said 34 �I saw a man I saw a man behind the village, along the stream that ran through a dense patch of trees I saw a man thin as a stick sketched out of charcoal I saw a man thin as a stick with a huge stomach, a cow’s stomach I called to my friend to come see the man but there was no man 35 �I toss you my wife o lappet-faced bird o whitebird whitebird, white stork with red legs when in the mountain snow is deep to the valley you come with your white-white wings eat-up eat-up fast 36 �the canyadas turn black I am a head rolling in the grass laughing at my brother sun (who thinks he is the sun) I am a foot running by the sea squinting at a gull (who has caught its mirror refection) I am a stomach wounded by a spear crying for the whale (snorting just below the surface) the moon is red I am whittling something leaning against a tree smelling death up close 37 �I, Phug-shag, warrior god of Tema-mo’s retinue, am pleased that you are using my mountain for study above green felds of janma trees dead leaves blow north wind sweeps about green felds of janma trees dead leaves blow north wind sweeps a million sickle leaves 38 �at my crazy behest and he fres the valley with a great roar and loud (loud) explosions and the valley, clogged with smoke, allows nothing but hiding my eyes suddenly it dies though the god is offended (he does not like anyone cutting green branches and is even offended if locals cut dry wood) crows cawed, crows barked loudly (loudly) all day long, say friends say friends from far away to appease the god we made a black tea offering next morning at Tsirab’s temple I say I am sorry, ask forgiveness, and make a black tea offering Tsirab is not angry in fact he is quite pleased Tsirab is defnitely on your side he is not upset at all 39 �fog and that deep-throated horn bellowing from your folds from the ocean foor where sea-cows moan sour earth stagnant like a woman sloppy and wet you are drugged on brittle haunches you squat no elasticity left 40 �O Goddess Protectress Who Holds the White Umbrella Please Accept this Tea and Smoke from Branches of Evergreen follow me, follow me, said a naked black woman riding saddleless on a big black mule that was Palden Lhamo the Glorious Goddess, the protectress of Drepung it means you will be entering Drepung said Aku-me who himself had learned the dharma there a tall, handsome man in a white Tibetan chuba pointed out a path go in --that direction he said that was Nechung, the protector of Drepung he was pointing to the south where Lhasa rises from Choo-chur 41 �foppy hooves among the savin in an iron fence with iron thorns encaged said the seer trapped inside the hollow of a stone-animal’s horn I see a strong black man with many eyes on his arms entering the fence bringing something out 42 �I saw him in the dew, through a crack in the dawn sit down for a while said one with long intestines nobody could rush him he saw, he says, and you can see it in his eye, Tanpai Gyaltsan give Dawa Drolma the reliquary when you come to die take my mind I have breathed from it all suffering I skip by on my way places no one knows of our love 43 �caves of increasing goodness when it rains a beautiful fringe of water drips across my roof when it rains stones shift crushing monks to death o dragon from the sea judge not my murderer for the jonquils are out swallow him with the sky 44 �month of the wild turnips ��little fy in your buzz, stillness rings I love stillness in my still home little fy 47 �for a second you were nervous (I saw it in your wings) you landed on my napkin turned clockwise but after turning clockwise you walked around for a while sky of fall o sky of fall leaves wind-brushed, debris everywhere here, taste a bit of the summer I live on 48 �fy of snow black fy, big fy your time is passed no one can help you 49 �go back to your hole gopher do not destroy what the ants have built your hill is useless no one will bother you 50 �o fox, your breath no purr no silent bravado 51 �in grassy fog the old mare stands skinny tail limp 52 �pork and grain pork and grain open their mouths push it in push it in hard 53 �of nilotic waist o tigress of the east fgment of the rapids’ nestling backwater 54 �looking toward the hills hummingbird hummingbird treading spring air your red fower will die in its wake, hard dry earth o hummingbird what will you do 55 �fickering wings each forms a V a gathering circling of fickering V’s fip fop fip 56 �a bank of birds focks of black o black wall of winter howling wind of winter 57 �gulls ride sand strut like kings beyond the purple crocus 58 �tonight the owl through rain I hear your purr low-slung, ancient 59 �having circled the fames of the vidyadhara’s pyre old crow, what is in your heart as you rest at the plain’s bottom 60 �above the water neither burning nor drying the water one red hawk closes its eyes as it sinks below the water’s sound 61 �o buzzard in the sky invoked the girl riding pillion 62 �cold grass in the storm tall blades fogged by the storm 63 �ever open your jaw swings low o orchid-on-a-stem where is your throat 64 �pot of pebbles zinnias and pebbles burning in the sun dissolving into light 65 �damsel tree for a second the junco . . . 66 �elephant man invisible enormous in your skull 67 �I break I break in sheer canyon coyotes yapping (howling) 68 �in hindsight a giant skin irreconcilable hair-split sky I rub up to the shadow 69 �thin girl in a shawl kneeling holding a match to the wood 70 �horseback opera no talking, no singing just patterns made as lamas ride 71 �I am a head when my mother gave birth my eyes like dzi aroused her eyre which she devoured 72 �this mother is not safe she thinks only of herself she will eat you in the night she will ravage you 73 �moulting his form at wood’s edge buried in leaves am I am my mother mother, please don’t fee 74 �gentle arab among your beans hair dyed pink 75 �in three years I’ll be dead, he said purple air dressed the trees the night being snowless 76 �live well we also will live through the brush the blind old man poking at things with his stick 77 �wild o too wild from the juice of him from the sudden swing of his caracole 78 �old leopard-beggar, go away the bounty money you want (though your pelt was stolen) go away old leopard-beggar 79 �sea-shell clan among the ghosts with your grit paint the wall white 80 �I thought I was myself but I am only a throat please come in I sigh 81 �old lady & bird is a canary that? no, it is her heart awake 82 �galactic world sharp as a crucifx blue-black tree wet from night the stars hold still and I, too, listen intently 83 �fog lurks tree tips through billows of gray a young breath parched but open sits inside your glory pool 84 �let water be a sob sea-shells sing sea-shells sing my tears at the lonely shore at the vast grinning ocean 85 �hot day in winter winter which is late winter, why are you late 86 �month of the deer running ��o Raven, my poison, ComE Bull-snake, my poison, ComE Crablouse, my poison, ComE Jim Lizard, he sit on a rock all day pretty clever but not serious a damn liar 89 �luck a man needs (must fnd) or he’ll just be common maybe a wolf maybe a bird 90 �HA! yells the guesser she’d laugh, shows the bones, throws them in the air sways side to side where’s so-’n-so parked over there by that juniper I get up spit behind the fame the camp is quiet a few babies cry 91 �why, you ask why well, I go to woods (I’m a young girl) look for berries but my poison fnd me he scare me I don’t look for him HE FIND ME! 92 �tin lizzie is fxed but we stay in the sagebrush spitting brown juice from one of the car’s foot-boards nowhere is trees emaculate green and lush (full of leaves) everyone knows everyone sees it like his own skin no road just bush a clump, a ditch six eight tin lizzies clunckity-clunk rattling through a campfre starts then another she’s weaving a basket of willow twigs you bring frewood I cook, all right 93 �within words its quantity long short the fre soars we’re lying around come on, SING the poisons don’t hear a woman says you did pretty good you help that’s good a man says he ask Raven is he going to die Raven says I don’t know ask the others sick man in a funk listens in his belly 94 �upper land I am it is dark and my wolf-bitch sways it’s dusk (I hear some shots) my poison don’t hear mountain lion, wolf, too far away, don’t hear 95 �how you steal a dog I dunno how you steal a poison (some shamans do) sure I do! they steal mine too if they can 96 �I’m pretty sick maybe I die I doctor myself you stay help sing maybe I die I dunno my shadow’s on the road can’t fnd me no more ohh . . . it hurt inside right here everybody die I ask my poison tonight sometime my poison very far away, not hear many sing, he hear better 97 �I catch a new damaagome he’s wild I’m training him follows me like a dog here you come yellin’ your head off damn it you scare him away the sick woman’s on the ground under a blanket on a bed of tules I sing I suck put my lips to her body and pull HARD pass me that lard can next day the sick woman she toss me some beads it’s not much she says it’s okay I throw them to my niini 98 �jackrabbits hares hundreds HUNDREDS pop pop pop so he goes into the bush has a louse for one of his poisons gets his louse to call hers pretty soon a woman gets up from her campfre (she doesn’t know why) wanders toward the bush right where the old man waits 99 �I sing into the horn my voice in the horn ha! my father is calling me I’d better go fnd him my damaagome he look for the horn 100 �it’s night we’re stumbling down a steep trail darn steep country I am slow gossip slow but erect dark-chocolate skin a few long white whiskers 101 �them people you don’t see coyotes, fox, dinihowis, damaagomes they don’t know me they might hurt me I’m say’n look I’m a friend I’m feedin’ you I don’t mean you no harm it’s dusk he chews spits in the four directions 102 �about the mortar near my hearth you shouldn’t do that he’s getting’ too hot too near the fre make him mad bring bad luck make you sick make your children sick 103 �old dri’s lament was set in minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and frst issued in digital form by Adobe Systems, mountain View, California, in 1989. Typesetting & production: Claudia Smelser. Printing & binding: Lightning Source, Inc. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Old dri's lament Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-08 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2007 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780979472107 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_020 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. month of the groundhog month of the squirrel month of the wild turnips month of the deer running Extent The size or duration of the resource. 116 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/a90e0f96c0a8657f42313dfcd7f38cdd.pdf 51ef0b890f721b05290ffa4b3276cdae PDF Text Text Mother’s Warm Breath �also by gail sher PROSE Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 POETRY The Tethering of Mind To Its Five Permanent Qualities • 2009 though actually it is the same earth • 2008 The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Coper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1996 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �Mother’s Warm Breath Gail Sher Q night crane press 2010 �Copyright 2010, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978-0-9794721-6-9 �For Brendan ��contents BOOK I: Birds 1 BOOK II: Sky 41 BOOK III: Mother’s Warm Breath 57 ��BOOK I Birds ��Once I saw a bird still and pink standing in a grove of trees. At twilight, on one leg, growing thin like a very young girl. Might it catch a bird, swallowing its bones? Its vessel holds sky carrying sky to a different place where it is fresh. When the birds blew further away, she felt the sky with her hand. The gray corolla of old ones, on a washed-out hill, colors broken off. How old is she? I ask, but they are sobbing. A woman watches, remembering herself through the bird. 3 �Rare beauty is begun, he thinks, seeing into the hill the limitation of my seeing where the dead person lingers. It is myself, looking at the grass, seeing its kindness suddenly. Food is offered, though a throat could disappear. Every given moment that you perceive is the same thing, you say and I’m thinking, It’s the bardo. It just arises and you see. 4 �You throw a piece of cloth on the hill. To see if the hill has green in it. Then you rub the cloth, gently touching your fingers. Sometimes the cloth is wrapped in sky and when you touch it to your face, it moves jerkily. The hill is seen from the belfry, its transparency of light merging with the green motion of air. Light crosses light on the edge of their fur. The latitude of fur as a place for light to rest, each hair being a support. 5 �Husky wings in low night. In low fur. Blue is blue, I’m thinking, separate from mirroring, blue or a mountain or a person’s face. This face is my own face. The slight sound of a bird fluttering in a bush could be bells or roots like cascades of long fragrant hair. A vulture scatters flowers and I saw that she saw that the wings of birds are light-fields. 6 �And now it is night. Seabirds play in frothy chips of glitter coiling like an aroma that is not one aroma because fading light gathers packs, fish, flies. Bone-buttons in a bowl, like lotuses in lakes, drift behind her mind. A rabble of dogs snarl. Whose limbs are dogs stiffened in their tracks or crooked trees dwarfed like a witch. There is fear and the notion of drifting across, as if a button is a raft pulled by sky, little awakenings by little awakenings. 7 �And the fire-pink, its ontogeny, how it came to be, as you say, erupted. An Avalokitesvara appeared on the bone of my foot when I took birth as a dog, a monk says. The time of his bones or sweet hair falling on the muscles of his shirt collar. You wander around from dream system to dream system, listening for yourself being handed to you by someone. Is like air being handed to me by someone. 8 �The time of sky has no direction, no containment, is and is not a vast field. She looks at the hill but sees the logic of the grass, a memory of death in a bird’s harsh call. What is behind the grass erupts from the grass. Is in her, as is in flesh. A bird purrs and its heart drips as the color of night thaws. 9 �The flesh of the bird was broken that day. Which wouldn’t hold its feathers, as the flesh was keen. (Old ones said provoked.) I see you on the edge, a fissure or cleft where a breach has been made and I think, Am I the breach? The gestation of wrongness is not carried by wings nor the deep drop of cliff overhanging the swollen stream. 10 �Being in the dark with so many mountains, so many startled animals. Please don’t try to tell me there are animals in the sky, someone says as she dozes. To affix a buzzard’s beauty. To stay born and follow the animal’s trail. A huge white edifice from afar looks like sky. Why is the sky white, she thinks, not realizing. 11 �An animal rests, luring her and stroked by her softly. Were I white, she thinks, recalling the knockered door of a nunnery, whose square of light crawls over sand. In the distance other people are stroking animals, pouring them in a jar or vacuuming them up in a little tube. I suspect that their voice still blends with the night’s stream, like the trees and like the real body of the people. 12 �Or like an old nest simply left. In things said back in the voice of a stranger. A woodpecker’s peck may be connected or not depending on her emotional needs. The boundary of a bowl leaves its edge, its age in lines around the bowl’s broad hips. A word in time creeps through its own wet structure, sentiment (throwback) or some anachronistic nest that slips away from its structure. 13 �All this time studying the dunes that crack around the sea. An animal is dead and breathes dead breath. Is still as a cross at the edge of a white field. I dress and wait for death though I am already in death. Through the wall a delphinium wears light, carrying it to the people. 14 �An animal eats, rubbing skin against sky, so that there is a larger sense of being in sky. As if it’d been alive for that moment of passing. Wind pools hills, luffing, and at the same moment, passing. Sky holds the animal up. What holds up the sky? she thinks, watching the animal’s hands resting on its stomach. The animal moves. Leaves move, and grass, like blowing hair, settles closer to the earth. 15 �A squirrel flies through air and the angle of light through its hair is like the ribs of night. Dawn in a squirrel is a raindrop’s fresh earthiness. A squirrel breathes in covenant with something. A fizzy motion of air blurs her vision of its claws. Whether or not it is from the sweet squirrel’s hair, her trouble of hair, inside its shell of hair. 16 �His experience of his hair versus her experience of his hair in the moment of his jump, though she is further from his hair. The non-location of the feeling later reifies in a dream of rainbow-feathers on a stick and a man waves the stick, touching her forehead. You almost know who she is, yet you do not know her. So you cannot forget her. 17 �Rubbing the bird, stroking its hair so that it is soothed. The old ones receive until they realize I’m dead now. I am half ghost. I eat all of their hair, always. Someone belongs here, she thinks, having the memory of her mother’s hands. A bouquet of birds contains her mother’s feeling for color. The hair on a fly, motionless, contains the memory’s breath clinging to the hair before it disappears. 18 �The hair is not an image of sky though it has sky qualities and has come from the sky. A gallery of eyes has the willowy look of lost people. A shadow from the sky holds the hills apart, like a tuft of hair emptied of sea. The beauty of a fox, its pink quick speed. Wisps of hair, air-brushed. 19 �Each night the sun slides out below the clouds, behind the sun leaning. One color leans and the other leans, so that there is a clean surface for the air to move. The rim of her body moves like the rim of an animal twitching in sleep. Now I regret my voice in the trees of them. 20 �A woman lives in her neck, settles in her neck. A cloud on its side is a vague motion in her heart. Night lashed on its braid folds around her back like a shell. A bird’s neck is infused with life, but later, after its song, she does not see the neck and thinks it is inside the bird. Geese prefer milk in this extreme world. 21 �Ah, geranio! someone exclaims at an osmanthus. It is November. The rareness of sky, wind, birds, in the month, in the sorrel and clay rocks of the past. Two doves nest high in an oak. One sits on a branch. Engorged with sun the horns of its center relax. I see death spread sun around your arm. Empty snow-light like a glassy puddle of melt. The nipple of the bird, its sound in the dark and thud of its fall through the cliffs. 22 �A butterfly lands so that her face pauses. Hearing the bird she follows her mind into the tail of the bird, into the tail of its children. Hearing the bird the occasion of its air and complete symphony of chromatic features. The delicacy of its wings as the deity pours flowers. 23 �Awakening in snow you hear birds. Their call is deep, rising from the riverbed. I hear your face in the echoing of trees. Bare branches on bare ground like quills in cold night. Each emitted word in the compost of earth fluctuates. 24 �Seeing the stark barren word flicker like grass covering the bird or place in the meadow where the bird grew. Your words are mixed with flowers. Mermaid words, half letter, half calyx, drawls the mind down. Like a word may be breached, or defoliated, she says. Its skin waxes blue across the chain-fenced field. Sometimes it slips from under itself so that virtuous, non-virtuous, neutral maintain in the word after it is broken also. 25 �Then her words are the only true words. (My own experience were also her words.) Awareness deepens to a pool. If I feel each letter, the heart of the word will be calmed. The impasto of color, of her face and of stone. The course of her face being before the face, so that someone else, seeing the light, could arrive at her face. Her approaching her, before her, its existence as an ache rising over the top of the hill. 26 �Ultimately birdness is a very primary, bottom-line, open-ended sense of awareness. Experience is what arises in awareness, the way light, say, accretes across a frozen pond at dawn. Through the wires it is done as when a thing has progressed beyond being erased, beyond a point where it can be forgotten. You are marked and for how long in this sky, reposing on a col on the summit-line. 27 �A hummingbird in air, whose qualities, imbued with dahlia, sits in air independent of the dahlia’s redness. Simply seeing the flower’s shape, discovering its motility, qi, or, as if wandering about, its intrinsic comfortableness. I’m lucky, you say. The brand of the child is mine to keep. (You can see the furry flower hugging its own passionate surface.) An insect’s leg outside the flower’s horn dissolves in cold winter fire. 28 �We are one sky in ourselves and in sky, she thinks. Sky is air changing into shapes of sleep, but it dies into sky, gentling itself out. Air is thin then, feeling through it to her breath. Is there a place, like sky or inside a flower’s head? She knows the town of sky, slow ice of all sky. A parallel sky, like a mountain park. 29 �Your face holds sky and when I look I see a particular old sky. Gestures are like sleep. The pathos of trees stroking the lake with their leaves. A woman wears red in the tall lean elegance of a bottle, as if her shape were identical with the bottle and also an old bottle. A drowsy man walks, carrying logs, so that in sleep the sound of their falling enters. 30 �Red leaves cover death, the substratum of death, the materiality of blood thought of as her blood or her past. You are started. You begin in my mind before you are you. Sometimes rabbits and prairie-dogs scamper among the grasses, but hers, now dead, would be found among the leaves. An image—a chameleon’s green in earth— comes before or after the image, as if you could peer through leaves to the war in the leaves. 31 �Being thin, I see mountains. Shade within shade is where a horse sits, but internally, like shade crosses a person’s eyes. I live you in my body. Is not ahead of her body, as a woman lags in her body. Wandering around ahead of her large body, a woman reads and the words take place in her ribs. 32 �Teepees line the land where she sets up her drums, in eggshell light, thin with beautiful pale colors. A jeweled pheasant drags the wind and fog is smeared through the pebbles. Her crimson wing (still in the limb) lays on wind, relaxing the wind. Sun floods a leaf battered by weight. Swirls slowly down. 33 �Sun mows down into a bone of air. A person notices and moves with a slight ‘reflect’ motion. That circumstances repel. That there’s resilience in a ‘reflect repelling instant,’ the gambol of repelling now in a cloud on the clearing’s north ridge. Each time you climb a piece of sky, you are imagining it is sky. Vespers are said in a chapel on a lane and the words reach the road but do not stay in its memory. A body lingers on the road, then seeps through the road draining through the aquifers. 34 �A child climbs a pole, beside a string of birds, beside the waves hanging there. His ladder to the sky has no reference point. Come sky he writes but spells it cum. The cum of sky, the sound of birds scuffling song through evening weeds. Rainbows, sometimes regarded as dragons, appear together as double rainbows. They soar into the sky, mani jewels threading from a string. Cold lake, for thousands of yards, soaks up the sky color. 35 �Once there were birds damaged in the flowers. If you look at the horizon after the bird, the memory of the bird or red, where the river flowers leaf out. A bird sings strong and her will to sing is strong, though it frightens her. Her will to sing becomes a branch where she sits. Thus singing loses singing. Subsiding. 36 �How dusk fills the tree is how the child’s weight is borne in her. Its feelings are a bowl whose qualities come from the base of itself and is how it truly feels about itself. A bird sings and as I look beyond you to the bird, my mind follows my eyes. But if I gaze and my mind wanders somewhere else, something shifts in the figure of a pigeon I remember touching. As if a pigeon were a natural replica of itself so that seeing it is seeing dark. 37 �Holding the bird, sheltering it in my pocket, its warm life drains into the fabric of my sleeve. Seeing the flower in a mirror and the emotion that caused her to see it that way, a little death. Whose attribution is not an appearance, is not opaque, but fluid like a wall or statue made of butter in the still mind of a soldier. 38 �Flower is flower and time in her mind out of darkness. The end of sight is clear dogwood, he says, where clear means empty and dogwood the clear light of space. A lama moves and I see his quiet ribs. My grave is made from logs so that night will be left there, he says. When the dogwood becomes earth we say the flower dies, but a child leaves a meadow not its life in the meadow. 39 ��BOOK II Sky ��A woman rests. She is lying on a bed back-to-back with a seated man. Touching is there but its time is not there. A woman rests between time. Like time in special settings and she is the setting whereby time vanishes. So he paints her body, being invisible and also seated on the bed juxtaposed and contiguous with the other person. He paints space though it looks like figures on a bed. The woman’s experience stretches toward the man but is unknowing of the man. 43 �I see light in the interstices of her body contracted around their crash in her body. As if shadows cover the hide of sky’s body, the concept of sky’s body being a short cut in time back to the experience, opposing the experience. How sun against the grass continues to the sky, the enclosure of sky, like seeing encloses sky, sky-before-sky, and the hour of sky’s midst. A sapling touches sky or exact moment of sky as philosophy of this sky, beholden to no other sky. 44 �So there’s sky and my experience of being sky, opening my hand, letting time be one of sky’s animals. A woman at dusk is green because the animals in sky are the color of the trees. As if there were sun in young green sky so that green may grow wild. A pool of birds on the bayside rill, the knowledge of which, the absolute utter familiarity, not of birds but of birdness drifting south along her orchid’s lips. 45 �A feeling begins. She might have been asked to teach this feeling, as if birds learn feelings once they wander from home. Like the sleeve of feeling relating to the sleeve of skin. If she notices, if she sees the bird seeing the feeling arising in her, transparency for transparency. The relation of a sentence to a bird or words to things (a word exposed in the skin of a woman cooking, knowing something not depositable in the room). A bird is light, being light-in-light, or air, in light, in water or airin-air, like a line around air. 46 �Shape slips to shape. Slips is for life. Sun rests along with the woman and her chair, the fluidity of time crawling over wood. How light against wood pulls the woman, wing of chair affected by the pitch of the wood’s fire. As if war were there crossing a line of hunger. 47 �A bird begins, darkly flying out. Someone sees the bird and thinks of Icarus falling as if falling is time and a boy falling is a measure of falling’s resonance in the person. A woman hears the self of herself falling, from the inside of falling, outside any limits of time. Passing it off as the performance of her falling, her experience of falling outside her experience of feeling falling. Angling its falling and the scattered tits of its breath’s loose scabs. 48 �A boy falls in neutrality. Between the feeling of death and death. I have the person, I say, instead of when he was the person, as if the person were its birth, and also, the experience of its birth. Being hey in the spread of a corpse’s tail. We strain events through time as if age is a place jilting her to there. 49 �A cricket squeaks, objectifying air, seemingly. The mystery of its disappearance in the dominance of a breeze, as if breeze intrinsically contains squeaking. Yet an eminence rubs off. Light alternately occluded and revealed. A cricket faces east though it is unseen and comes into east slowly. 50 �Even my mother disappears in the red carriage. She waits at the side of a snowfield in her hat, which is an elegant hat, beyond her capacity for a hat. A hawk skirts sky along the places where sky stops. As if place were not the hawk but all things touched by the hawk. A caw is like space, gluing space where caws are space. 51 �My mother is a cloud like day across a hill. Hill is an agreement. A being’s short life, without the affection of life stirs a memory of experience exterior to what is beheld. Like an offering thrown opposite the sign where a negative force originates. The lines of my hands sink with the sun. Who may you be crawling where I am, dangling from the riverbed? 52 �Sometimes I think that my spirit sleeps in water flowers. I sink into the land spreading like a shadow. Violence exudes from the flower’s previous color as in her mind she cannot find the color. Something sad, say, may look to you like a color, like fate is a color. Seeing is conveyed like a boat conveys seeing, seeing death and then its color. Seeing’s inside is color. 53 �A woman begins, though her face is absorbed, dark in a dark room. As if dressless, a woman reclines at the bottom of a space, perfectly alone. So a body grows down into itself, which is how a painter can paint himself and not be himself. Seeing the inside of time, the constraint of time, like a flower in a cornfield blossoms into a puzzle. 54 �The beauty of air, moist, and her experience of moist as she breathes night, in and out heavily. As if a shell forms inside both of us. The shells of her are lines turning light into a quality of time. Density holds time like water in a lily congeals (sets) so that a cause happens and the result looks like a lily. The pinkness of time whose insides are flowers is in things, shells smelling this way. 55 �A bird begins slowly, is risen slowly. A vague line of mind annuls the feeling in a word which is replaced with lines of time tracing the word’s beauty. Time appears but it is color not time. A bird’s loveliness is time. Slow is the horizon itself. 56 �BOOK III Mother’s Warm Breath ��DOG My old mother barks. I hear her over death. Wake up, someone says. A letter dissolves into the being’s feathers. All the little animals timed to her, playing we, playing the arms and legs, so that there isn’t anything left. The portrait of a dog, its perpetual yank of teeth is a portrait of dissolve, where dissolve too is liberated from what’s false. 59 �The brain of the sound loosens into color. I, a dog, claw myself out of solidity. Her toenails are claws and she gets to choose which kind of dog. As the brain descends, darkness descends, in the no-house where the dead assemble. 60 �Is the claw a bone? It seems to weigh more than the bone. Like the weight of a bone being suddenly too heavy, as if her body were the wrong body though the bone is okay. I’m trying to remember. Wings are divvied up. The track of one hovered in a spoon. I dedicate something, which sounds like a word but I am dead. 61 �Fades in a distant dog. There is a waterfall. Dogs fall into her body. Fades to sea (kerfluffle of brook) the mountains and rivers of that tidepool. The wingspan of a dog has white speckled markings and there are heavenly dogs which she painted. The jiffy of her dog, o my god, in its quick march toward its drumbeat. 62 �Someone whispers black, which is enclosed in black like in a wedding of black and me. Since its aggregates are black, I call myself black and sit in it like a dish. The sound of day stops. The wooden dog stops. My hand is me now. So you can’t tell. No one can tell. 63 �HAIR Her mind is hair, white, earthy, cropped, like total hair. Give me your hair, someone says, which I think is my mother asking for my hair. Offering hair on a platter, the sound of a plum sits in its color, as if the stomach had her name etched on its flesh. Ripe and dark, like the rind of her being scraped and tossed away. 64 �It is the bed inside her mother. Mommy! But the bed is a plum in which the mother insists she sleep. A thin bed, fragrant from practice. As if her skin were too shallow. Which could be food from the settlement of her father. 65 �A hair is fed. An offering of hair yielded to the mountain. A youngster bird grey in the mountain. In its plum, spooned up and being. The bird of hair speaks and it is a warm bird, as if air could be a bird, the wait of their tongues having never before been brothered. My voice and your hair thrive on a metronome of waltz time. 66 �One fixed to hair. For example nuns, in the white folds of wandering hair. Which the nun hides in a shell, so it is there, with her as she washes, and she knows her hair thoroughly. I, the voyeur, do not perceive her hidden hair. I may not and do not grasp this internal shield. I, the voyeur, am outside the circle that her yellow hair makes there. 67 �I intend hair, I say, and begin to practice those qualities that support it. I mean from its depths, like the nondiscursive mystique in the drape of a nun’s habit. You are allowed to be hair, bottomless hair, through drapes whose folds hold the depths of hair’s feeling. I lay upon a rock, ministering to them, to the empty linearity of her mind exposed on a hot day. 68 �SKY I make a connection between my mother’s towel as an object and towel as the nature of my old mother in morning sun. She grooms light in the endless cleaning of herself. She bends over sky. I draw sky like a lesson of myself. From outside through a window, an image of her in split-second segments. 69 �What a filthy piece of sky, I say, brushing the air with a spoon. You feed sky to the person. A leaf through her skull blows down the valley. She recalls something, the dead child’s face, or more liminally, think of a still-born’s face. So sky is subjective, like a private game of cards, shuffling, dealing, from the bell of each card. 70 �Sky is an ability. As if there were a zoo of sky, a rib of sky inside the bird. At large in death inside her own emaciated wingspan. I hug sky, the limbs of sky, mimicking fruition as in starships. 71 �Being an angel then, in my own hole of sky. Now I am gone but we still talk, don’t we? Now I am not. The bone-cake of me gone. My old mother’s bones are quarter-moon bones. (Whose butter bones suspends from the sharp essence of her breast.) Sky stops for a moment. Or tree of sky which I experience as a cuff of sky. 72 �Eagles rest on it. Are forms projected outside, as if they exist very private and wrapped up. To ascertain the rhythms of sky your fingers tap to that. As if the mind of one were a baby. On the shore of herself, as though time itself, as though time were there running alongside time. Time is color then. A capability from the old river. 73 �PIGEON A girl steps out of her tall black dolly. The mother of one, like a doll plopped in the corner. Where is her prettiness? A certain prettiness that you know, that you can even touch. Soft breath from her eyes, but the eyes themselves are rocks. A songbird peers, caws. A fish caws to the harmony as if it knows who it really is. 74 �You are the person that you have forgotten. As if the real you fades into air, indistinct from the particles drifting across your face. Where waking sees ground and you are the ground, not dead wood. Being privy to ground (king of ground). A young bald bird sits parallel to the window. The hill inside the bird. (Knowing the hill from seeing the bird’s shadow.) 75 �A bird bell tolls by the river of her father. Wrapped in a dress she tucks her wings. So she is just a dress. If you look you see a dress plunked on a step, asleep. Tucked in her dress, tucked like a bird. The spectrum of her inside a chilly bag. But her feet are young. 76 �The pigeon is immovable. She rests inside me, looking through me to my daughter. A bracelet at her feet is like a rock carved with her tongue. So I wrap my tongue in bandages. Is the hawk’s wrist in mountainless dead-lands. In the feet of our voices, the feet of the birds are calm. 77 �Inexorable coo, are you bleeding? The harp of you, though the monk swore you’d be spared. Seated in its knowing, its face in shadow is alive. So I forget who I am. As if the need stopped. 78 �MOTHER’S WARM BREATH i Mother’s warm breath, like a plate of breath. Yet it is old breath, having eaten many crackers. My breath is a wall, she whispers from real breath, instantly present to birds. The energy of the animal appears to be experienced internally, its breath (a shadow) withheld in its own stem. What’s left of mind as a squirrel leaps out? 79 �If she pulls air out, in a tantrum say, or superior air, parceling it out to descendents. I feel the sweet journey of your air, she muses. Swift and stark, its transmission in a jar. A harem of air bustling down the hallway, a trance of air parting through itself. I am cleaning my air, she’s saying, as if the air were inside her stomach. 80 �As if the air were blood and she is poured into a glass. Air is definitely blood, someone says. Warm green blood from the mittens around her legs because there’d be a war of dogs, afterwards, in the bushes. To accrue war she saves up the noble green color because pure view is always seen through the light of the five colors. My nails are on fire, she says, seeing her hands in a later version of hands (like being friends with her hands when they are dog’s hands). 81 �How many hands are in the dog’s hooves, she wonders, because paws are everywhere. As if all the hands were grabbing her tits greening everywhere. A birdhouse of tits so that the feeder-birds chew green blood from the mother. I am ordained in blood, the samaya “blood” whose liturgy I’ve accomplished. 82 �ii My mother is a place. And a being from there having qualities, as if she is also from there. From the inside of her being her, gradually becoming her in the same taste as russet-pink. Russet-pink is a field carrying one’s pure essence, like a whiff, oh! that’s her! Maybe some pawmarks. Totems of her gaining belly from herself. 83 �A place is by chance (like pain is a guess). Like a lid with its definite jar, she’s attached to this, thinking maybe there’s no other jar. The lid has a slogan, which she wears and thinks it’s not right if her family does not. Like a birth word, say. Every person has one word. 84 �Held adrift by old old hearing. Don’t touch you! says her own face. (For she recognizes the previous resentment and its marks on her old face.) As if spring follows summer and we are already at the beginning. If my father is murdered, does that mean I am dead or (like one’s face in sound) about to be dead? 85 �A legacy of light is separate from reflection, like a legacy of dog only sees itself. So there is mourning but not knowing. She could be a dog thinking she’s a dog. Her formless growl cracks like a flower, like shards of voice but one hears only the thinnest outermost skin. I harbor myself in the familiarity of something, air, leaves, peacocks running across a field. 86 �People coming in like the last second of her knowing. As if she’d snapped her teeth. Stealing knowing, she becomes simple. In the interstices of a plan, like knowing skips to what’s there anyway. The value of her in the real actual sitting down, till she rests. 87 �iii It’s a disclaimer, the notion of a dog on the outskirts of her own dog. Her groin is young. Her pointy nose brings out the animals. Her voice has tongues and the tongues also have some. The muscles in her tongue carving my name fast. That’s why I die, sipping myself away. 88 �Being old and cold, living in a box. I pull on her tongue so that the air can be colorful. Can you fit into a word? I ask politely. (It is a long thin tongue.) A droplet of rain ripens. Where is the daughter of this body? Are boxes of tongues, postures of tongues, juxtaposed and contiguous with one’s internal experience of tongues? 89 �Her name begins in the back of my throat, bubbles in throats, like a cliff of throats. In the fro of the dream, as if beauty were beyond it. I look closely at her throat whose little hairs wrinkle. I saw them be calm. A stream of heads are throatless and I begin to think, SHE STOLE THE THROATS. 90 �I, mother of a word, am also mother of its flesh. I, mother of a throat, cannot know its container. The ebb of a word still in her mouth. Whaaat? Whaaat did you say? she’d say, as if lugging the word up. Her whaaat is space, each letter jettisoned from crayola. 91 �Mother’s Warm Breath is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. ��,!7IA9H9-ehcbgj! � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mother's warm breath Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2010 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780979472169 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_019 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Birds Sky Mother’s Warm Breath Extent The size or duration of the resource. 102 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/af0f9b51099c0cb4aa4d36561c9b2497.pdf c4c593d7d554336410860c3985930697 PDF Text Text Mingling the Threefold Sky �also by gail sher PROSE Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 POETRY The Twelve Nidānas • 2012 Figures in Blue • 2012 The Bardo Books • 2011 White Bird • 2010 Mother’s Warm Breath • 2010 The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities • 2009 though actually it is the same earth • 2008 The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1996 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �Mingling the Threefold Sky Gail Sher night crane press 2013 �Copyright 2013, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. ISBN: 978-0-9858843-2-1 �For Brendan ��WH I T E 1 �A man in the dark is a dark man. He calls me from inside the dark water. That I recognize him in the night without waking is a growing urge of mind. And then the man appears. I gradually orient toward the man. The tremulous multiplicity of pause, as if dark is pause, an umbrella of veins puffing and dissolving. 2 �It senses her and stops. She orients towards the stopping like the possibility of a person who would be out of darkness. The stop repeals its form like a word repeals the sensation of something, the commission of a sound that holds the language of a word. Sound fills the cavity and she is there pressing. I am practicing the word through its darkest cubits of blackness. O sister word! Hold insouciance to any word and you have the word resolved even of the idea of word. 3 �The man holds the word in the space of himself, in a word made ready for itself. Such that time is rescued out of her, the long day of time. I am a thin bone of light, like a duck of light to nothing. The floor of the word, the long trouble of the word. (She feels from the word a certain mastery of negation.) I will live in the word. If its boundary is something produced by the word. 4 �She tries to feel her floor, but she is thinking about a cavity, something fluid like a worm and she wants to say the worm. A moan is a moan and where can it reside if not on her floor, the speech body of that word. She jerks it up but trips so that she is the floor and the glue and the shame. I have a habit of glue, she confesses. A flame of everything sears into shape, which is not the word, but the colorless basis of its Pure Land. 5 ��Y E L L OW 7 �A vein of sun hits a woman’s cheek. What is her face, she wonders, a blush of cheek beneath the long hair of her goldenness. How sunlight fills the sky is how the mind myelenates appearances to her. Whose milt is on the edges. It stands in front of sky such that all she sees is sky. The absolute knowing of sky, weather and sky, like a prerogative that’s said against which she may stroke her child. 8 �Though she sits facing away, as if it is in her, one feels the age of this away as her. The painter paints time locked away from its material, like her own personal face exiled from her face. As if away without location is the real time, the real completion, a recrement of sky, the other loneliness of sky. Rangjung dorge’s face. Its light is not what is in me that way. 9 �As the moon releases into sky, shedding yellow back to sky, you see a person’s face deep in the heart of the eye of one. Day walks out of day losing track of its intelligence, the part of day held back from day or the end of his life which is so heartbreaking. Sound at a distance extends from in front of him. The arc of his face leaks into shape. The space between her face, the moon’s display of face. (The features of her belie her apparent face.) 10 �* The color of day, two figures in a plain, as if two were possible outside of itself as a number. As if day were a point dabbed like paint onto the brief cortex of togetherness. A pattern of her in yellow, such that she too, though he, the he of how they came to be here forever. Where clouds are yellow and birds are yellow, a double portrait of her, which is them as who she is. 11 �It’s like these two things, the way light throws itself over land, them as a pulse, a stream of apposite colors. The metaphysics of grey within a yellow space, or closeness, the duo of her body coming to be the grey. For this she’d received an empowerment. A doleful space of air. A prosody of air. The belly of the mind leaks the containment of them, as how the painter lifts the them of them and simply puts it on a piece of paper. 12 �Waiting is the movement. Waiting is not resting because the aspect of pair, a person’s hat of hair, the tip of the world at the edge of his hair. The man is not. He is thinking about something else. His hat facing light holds the tension of his being there. The skirl of light obscures to fading light. A vague sense of waiting hangs over his elbow. Now he is home listening to its softness as if inside me I have finally found my bedfellow. 13 �* The fold of a tree over light on a road, if she is in the road, the sense that she would be there anyway. An old live tree, like the life of someone screaming, is the language of the tree pushed outside its form. What colors grow untouched in her, her and her, what she sees on the Paris streets. Old registers hard even in a bit of shade. 14 �What is it in a tree that seems to be erased, as if emotion were space, and the subtlety that is part of the tree, the great washing over of space. The way time holds light on the inside of her which is how color organizes itself toward a person. It makes me question whether sky is the same since movement is not limited (I begin to see sky as limited). Fifty three skies settle in my backyard may simply be sky pouring out sky. 15 �The painter’s mind meets tree and recognizes where there should be a tree but it seems like a real tree. Tree is how time rests back on its own mind. Because trees need repeatability. Its eye is that prostration. I will catch my eye in the rigpa of her eye. Sacraments repeat in the full verse of eyes, the laying on of an eye, a closed eye or even an eye asleep. 16 �RED 17 �Someone paints a dream thinking it is the person, cuts out the dream and the dream becomes its word. Now the person will know and his word will have the letters of an eastern province. He is tied to this loosely as if beyond the chance of knowing, a bodice of time (angling loosely) down the crevice of his back, loosely. A man in a horn makes a home for himself in the horn such that the space in the horn opens to the vast expanse of his own mudra. 18 �Looking east into space as it pales into sky, he is hearing her painting her but not from the source of her hearing him hear her. A rattle, disassembled by his mind, appears at the flounce of her skirt-line. Can’t also. Can’t relates to time as an index. Can I fit? If I were who I am? The equation nags a memory. What is the equation for the mind outside the time, the Sugata of time, each tissue of time. 19 �The sound and the struggle to receive it in his body, like its bloodtype is wrong for a person with his body. It’s a situation of her blood becoming ready to be her blood, after the pogrom, after the sea. Actually red is Word. Shtetl is the adjective. Can’t is not east, nor made from the red of tongues. What translates from the sea (because her ankles hold the sea) now able to be a sea, steadying up the sea. 20 �The fib of the girl groping through herself, because real hearing is just itself, cheap like the wrong mother. I am swimming for ten minutes, cries the Ocean God’s one-eyed children. Though the habit of time makes red seem almost hollow, the dakinis say, no, please, our joy is red. Outside blessing there is no red. I tear up. I realize who she is in the sconce of her red body, like an offering to sky or how the dark sea holds up sky. 21 �The intimacy of red is like hearing the sound of your birth. Or the birth of red, like at Yale where red is a park. What pertains outside of what we think of as a color (if red were a smell and we put it in a jar, and someone opens the jar). If sound is red, coming to synthesis in a word, the word lifts off its word, the clarity of mind raised to the red of the word. 22 �Her body is red and her penis, also, is a thick red. Like you could vacuum red into your hand let’s say. Fucking red, sliding her hand up the thick course of all procreations of red fathers. HOW-at-large is how the mother dissolves. She clothes the bars that tie her land to red. 23 �Breaking back the skin of its tip, some say it’s the cut itself, the brave cut of red in the hollow of its mind. The mind of red cusses red, backwards toward the front of its tongue. The lungs of the sea are hollow of devotion. One keeps its body close like a vajra “dick” of red’s secret body. Tongue, mouth, body are as if painted red, but gushingly so that the green of red, the deep soft of green’s pure body becomes red’s Luscious Body. 24 �GREEN 25 �I look out on a hill. It is bald with exuberance of old decaying objects. A shallow hill and sense of day dissolving is a lateral memory of time. A shrub is alive, its decay is alive. The slope of the hill may not be selected into finitudes. In a cycle of empty light, no birds land. 26 �I see a house of rolling hills as if the hills had taken refuge but had not taken a vow of refuge. Hills and hills of bedding in light, the taking of light, the laying down of light. The observance of the vow is definitely green, though below the ground dark movement churns, as if the spirits of light are upset. A pretense of green, which is unfortunate, like the mistress of the beds whose greens purvey a chakra that can’t settle. 27 �The engine of green is continuous, she says. (You are sitting in a room watching a broadcast on a small screen near the ceiling.) Many people are there, like a corporation of there (the sense of there is inside them, which they now realize). Their ribcages have come ajar, but instantaneously and with conviction, like This ajar is final. As a woman teems into the room, what stands as her own body. Mind implodes its fulfillment body. 28 �* Windows play to light and glass and hair and pointing, but the heel of the point is old and its green is old. Sucking green, like at night when she sucks the hell out of her body. Her form stands inside the essence of her body, a symbol of space like a letter that stands for space. The dawning of an arm through a glass of green, a species of pirouette on the point of her final green. 29 �She feels stuck in the glass, both sensing its meaning, but like a dream, sensing a peripheral lurking falseness. In the wild of glass, how can I be born in so much glass? (The rectitude of her sash has long been known by the girl.) Anything formed loses nascence, someone cries. Crystal becomes a deity, rice a snake lashing about as a protector. Movement has stopped but the agony of time, a dancer stands in the glass of her toe shoe’s time, like an asana of time. 30 �The still of a dancer’s back, if it is of movement, is not an image of my feeling. Because there needs to be green. That’s the mandala inside my whole body. The nuance of the color will convene in me. Its word is laid in me. Quiet morning light brings a bowl of it to her forehead. Day is her support, the first position of mind, a turn-out of mind so that day may grow long. 31 ��B LU E 33 �A paradigm of phrase, such as a woman bending, whether it be evening or fall, in the slow motion of bending toward something. The awareness is in her neck and gentle down of softness as if the profile of her face faces a separate direction from her face. As if her face stands beside its own absolute loveliness, revealed in down whose axis is not the axis of the intelligence of her body. Her body sits down in the weight of a person’s shell whose full curving masses become, some say, the racial quality of the shell. 34 �Race is blue as in the catching of a mind, a shallow remainder of mind deep in its inheritance. Whose dristi settles, both in herself, if her mind spreads to his through her body. That a dristi can be queen combines a long history of sewing, how her character can stop (though the motion of bending does not stop). As a painter paints the lack of occurrence of mind, she goes in which is instantly the real mind. 35 �Am is the assessment. (I am new, clean as sky.) Because boredom is open and joy is open, like if I am a bird and then tomorrow the intervening presence of myself. Whose scent is in the tukdam. The bird grows small but she is dead. The awareness is there and the vicinity, too, holds the bird. 36 �She’s a shot bird. (Shot is a value.) I am in the purview of tenderness, she’s crying. I am a broken bird. I am raped and then I am a bird again. Is heard through a clearing, but it is just the bird and she shines its light so prettily like the repeated sequence of a waterfall. 37 �* Here is night and death lies bleeding, the deepest black of light at the edge of a sparrow’s forehead. Its dark internal quest pushes toward what is exact in him, to say a state of dark at the bottom of his pillow. And there’s something else that I can’t remember, a holocaust of birds being the blackness of pale color. The space of black is the barren essence of a color, like pain or his mind that we can no longer say is a color. 38 �Blackness is alive, palpable in an accused person. A guard senses it trembling. The black of an iris makes black out of light. It’s the kingdom of black blowing black across the fields. What is this word, like a domino of air, which they cannot know, cannot take. Light enters through its scales. We welcome you into air, they say, but they have no idea of air, they are just saying air. 39 �The guard sees a scale and says this is the scale. Its stillness is black and its water is black. Like a bodice of death is effluvial and lightly striated colors. Said and its air that comes to him from somewhere. Saraha is the name of one, whose arrows have the thickness of one. Is pierced in my hair (or half of hair) excoriates the poverty of its word. 40 �He sees the mind in the word as a sudden realization, not just the vision but as a particular situation. Like time exists in time, but due to the power of infinity of ordinary errors stays fully dissolved in confusion. Past doesn’t exist, the guard repeats. (The struggle to extort a sense of how exist can be.) The blue motion of a star, the torture of the star. In the ash of it is a word, but not conceived, as in the slow fingernails of his father. 41 �* Blue land falls to dusk before dusk falls, like a taste that opens in your heart. A wind of blue settles with sky as it fades over the land. A gum-tree is quiet. Air absorbs its light. As if a penny were dead, slow in slow night. The slow vase and touch of winter. 42 �His view of mud in the full jelly of the land, blue or black as he calls to her primitively. Shadows of time pour out their place so as to not encounter anything. Shapes at a distance may be sky making arcs, a vagina aroused to sky and open to sky’s subtleties. Blue is space. Dusk is source. In a lapse of wind, the skin of rain hovering, a word that has departed. 43 �Lust in the wet land. (I fish into my mind.) Mud in particular stands beside each light particle differently. Night is light. Night is so light. If you touch it it turns into memory. He stares into blue as it softens into not blue, making distance from elaborations of blue-on-blue, blue-on-not-blue. 44 �Dusk in a hill dissolves into a cow, visible but indistinguishable, like consciousness. The cow has an umbrella. The dakinis are playing their drums, people say. A rainbow is the deities welcoming the cow back. The local wisdom deities are so happy to see the cow. The cow allows its happiness to be seen. 45 �Mingling the Threefold Sky is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mingling the threefold sky Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2013 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780985884321 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_018 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 52 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/756f9d90b1f1473951cb5d83528759a7.pdf 9a6e54672e9c86926e40cf77aaeb9b5f PDF Text Text Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms �A LS O B Y GA I L S H E R Prose The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984 / 2004 Poetry Raga • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms Gail Sher Q NIGHT CRANE PRESS 2002 �Copyright 2002, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press, 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. Second printing 2005 ISBN 0–9726115–5–X �For Brendan ��TA B L E O F C ON T E N T S BOOK ONE Eating Little Fishes Part One Part Two 1 115 B O O K T WO Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms 271 ��BOOK ONE Eating Little Fishes Part One ��Snail breeze on a shaft of moon A dawn moon awakens me, softly softly, its waning light. Dew sparkles on the cobweb-veiled grass. Still in my nightgown, I carry my dream to the blue porch rail. Neither dew nor dewy cobwebs dull the song of birds. 1 �Larks, blackbirds, kingbirds. The sheer spectacle of the meadow! On wheels in snow – a spring sheen on the snow! Flowers flash out (do not wait to perfect their leaves). Nubby peach branches. Just-beginning-to-open buds. Yet, unlike the sated hawk, the flock of crows laugh. 2 �Spring shouts, then strangles itself in foliage “The flower opens, and lo! another year.” I roll up the curtain, drag my mat to the porch. An early cricket chirps, then stops. I wait. Will it sound again? In the eastern pond, water lilies, duckweed, a confusion of lovely greens. 3 �I saw in the east just over the woods It’s March. Creatures and plants awaken. Worms, beetles, jaunty shoots emerge from snow-sodden banks. Rain blows in layer after layer. (Flies relax in pools of sun.) The raucous jay, its bossy call above spring sparrows. 4 �Bursting forth early, sap runs down the maple’s snowy trunk The air is clear and fresh after last night’s storm. Everyone is out. Snow melts, gushing down the hill Meadow-water high. Billowy sails toss in the distance. I’ve been sick. The lovely sight raises my spirits, though I still can’t eat. 5 �A clock ticks, or is it a dripping faucet? Butterfly, did I dream you nectaring on your favorite flower? The March wind that wakens me is too cold for your limbs. I hear the rain and silent birds that probably scared you away. Long ago you hunted the gully between my home and hill. 6 �Breeze and good weather make my body slothful Sewing near the stove, I listen to the howling wind. I planted some seedlings hoping the weather would hold out. Foolish me. But I wanted to do something practical. Everyone’s talking about it behind my back. 7 �Mother and I chat Out in spring clothes, my shadow, the lake’s immaculate skin. “Feeling the south wind, young grain ripples like wings.” Blue, the blue sky unmarred by mist. Peaks in easy view. From a bird’s nest, plundered, one spotted egg rolls into the water. 8 �And ginseng roots which were really little girls The valley floor gives way. Ice, too, is letting go, though it is still winter. Water parcels out the sky as it backs onto distant cliffs. It’s quiet here. Snow fleas are about. The fan-shaped leaves of a rare ginkgo through the windblown scattering dark. 9 �Peach flower spring 1 A creek, a bridge, a country store beside a slope. Swatting a fly, the matron huddles over her tub of roots. “A drop of water, if you please,” I feel I am disturbing her. A butterfly, too, soon flits off toward the distant pasture. 10 �My father’s wine is sweet “Warbling softly, flowing beneath the snow, the rivulet already knows that spring is coming.” A Monarch, weeks prior, senses the autumn’s cold. Lying in the shade of an exuberant elm, a cow chews its cud all the more calmly. A door, an altar, make sense for an instant. 11 �The clear blue sky absorbs its mother-o-pearl cloudlets I love spring in the mountain’s spring-scaped valley. Tightly-curled poppies lap up the warming sun. They say that boar and wild pigs roam the thickets at night. But it could be wind in the young-leaved trees, rushing down the cliff. 12 �Tadpoles of high antiquity Of seasons, spring is the saddest. Petals underfoot a day after they arrive. Baby birds shriek, then suddenly are silent. Quiet penetrates the whole valley. 13 �Yet its nakedness is agreeable Nothing awakens old memories like the moon. As I lay on my cot, it rolls out during a reprieve in the long rains. Outside my cabin a patch of moss collects rainwater in its furry tendrils. Flicking drops off one of the tiny shoots – woe! – spikes of whiskered grass! 14 �Sharing a single lamp Angry with you, I sit silently near a window. I don’t even want to hear your excuse. Listening to the rain rustling down a pine, why bother behaving in ways I’ll regret? 15 �What-does-it-matter pavilion The air is glorious, unbidden rain passed. I open the window and gaze out on the garden. Snaky roots of fluffy pines, sodden, mud-stained, gored. Turtles, hearing the noise of people, flock around, stick up their necks. “Why don’t you come out?” someone calls to me, soundlessly moving her lips. 16 �Black snow-wings, like a fairy tale, other-worldly Pot-bellied sail. Fat wind feeds you all too much. You bob along the river, proud. I long for home and you could take me if you’d notice me wave. But swiftly with the current you rush on with the next gust. 17 �Then a short, squatty leap over the spatterdock Veins of sun streak the air, still wet from heavy rain. Flats of seedlings toppled by wind, mud and roots splattered. A small dog sniffs the tiny leaves that yesterday looked so promising. I kick them aside, tiptoe my way over the mess. 18 �The sound of a spade is also musical Warm rain from the night continues this morning. The thousand peaks look squeamish (gorge, a maze of soggy leaves). “Close by, spring water whistles crowding its stone channel.” Copying poetry as the fine rain falls, the same note from the wind-chime again and again and again. 19 �“Let’s go, babe!” says my dad a snapshot later Pale rain – daisies drink you sumptuously. Sun peaks out behind your silky curtain of beads. I wander through my garden, crocus and trillium asleep. Have you stopped? No. Yes. For a moment I thought so. 20 �Not for the fish I go fishing This morning’s rain sounds different. What is it like? Soft, throbbing, as if each drop were dressed with little pads. Musk, or is it sandalwood rising from the old ash-filled bowl? The waving rivers and serene hills produce a sense of eternity in me. 21 �My shadow, the cliff’s, disappear altogether Seals and gulls nestled on bare rock. Settled in, sprawled out, their postures ridiculous. What am I doing in this cove of salt sky? Red clouds, waiting to pry grass-sprouts from the earth. 22 �Swaying tops, staked out by the returning birds Rain everywhere, continuously, monotonously. Crows too, silenced by the deluge. While I love the sound, the notion of the earth being fed, a part of me is scared. 23 �Wispy, slender, too young even to attract a sparrow My dosha,2 like the wind, is made of air and ether. Layers of snow, sheaths of haze3 are beautiful in their prime. Carried by a breeze, I watch a monarch float past trees. I think, “I’m like that.” 24 �Toeing the door, platter of cakes and a light step South River bank: hairbreadth of green hill or treetops at bridge’s arc? I pick the treetops. Rapids perky, chortling like a brook. Stone fox, you watch, but I’m not your prey. Is it turtle eggs? Cows graze, the meadow reeking yellow flowers. 25 �Tadpoles squirm in crusty little puddles Up and down, up and down, the granite steps craggy. Wild cries through the forest. Branches crack. One breaks and hangs limply. Turtles bask and fish rise lazily to my hand. A water lily floats. Is that snoring or praying that I hear at the pond’s edge? 26 �Three days by palanquin White-blossomed waves drift through the exotic city. Roasted fish, freshly caught, plucked from their embers and sold. A little boat featuring cakes, bobs nearby, its vender stooped. Fishmonger and cake lady gossip like old friends. 27 �A monk’s tender welcome Bang bang bang bang! The sound grows louder, more insistent. “What’s that noise?” I think, awakened rudely from a dream. My gaze rests on some flowers, huge and skinny in their silky emerald corsets. My vine’s young tendrils grasp the air passionately. 28 �Brushing his teeth at the edge of a flowerbed Shooting star, your silent plunk on the star-covered lake. Feathery pine, your fresh young scent. Outside my window, a pair of love-birds chatter, peck each other’s beaks. The two of them, absorbed, seductive, constantly rubbing wings. 29 �Spring arouses the King of Wu-Yüeh’s desires “Roadside flowers are in bloom – no hurry, but come on home!” writes the King to his consort, away, visiting her family. What will she do? (His desire is explicit.) Wild birds insistent. (In my dreams I say, “Yes, your honor.”) The evening is chilly, or seems chilly, after a hot spring afternoon. 30 �Single-fold flower Rascally cats do have their way with us. Have you ever watched one, for example, hunt? One bony shoulder taut with silence, noticing brocaded blinds, will follow the breeze, of course. 31 �I feed myself just enough water Thin. Some are startled. “Why are you so thin?” they stupidly ask. The day is hot, the air thick, sooty almost. I sit by my window, nightgown white, hair a maze of just-washed snarls. I gingerly raise the awning exposing the sweet smell of grass and wet earth. 32 �Asleep but easily startled Fishing along the quiet, unfrequented banks of the river. Cryptomeria grove dark, even as late as noon. A sudden rain, a breeze. A butterfly investigates my lunch. “Hello!” Like the poet I wonder, “How long will lovely days like these last?” 33 �Cows, dogs, day-laborers, slogging home in the last ray of sun The sea, day blue, yields to a warm west wind. Look at that shearwater, wings outstretched over the ebb-tide. Slender clouds, swift, showy, race through a crack in the tall trees. Without rain, hungry branches lunge at their departing tips. 34 �At dusk, in your red-plaid shirt, you climb the road out of the valley The tributary widens, parts the waves in gentle moonlight. Stars crowd around its slim, sheer, glaze. I step into the garden, smell the flowers newly blossomed. A puppy jumps ahead of me, skittish, pleading for something. 35 �In my weakened state, it’s hard to make the best of my resources Weather dry, soil lean. Several tens-of-mou 4 nothing but rubble and stone. “Who’d waste strength on land like this?” I mutter to myself. My friend, Ma Chen-ch’ing, requested the plot. (He saw me shriveling away.) A few birds, a crow, forage at a puddle’s edge. 36 �A poet (of “idiotic talent”) attaches (she says) to the tail of her teacher Wild birds, their screech, tossed by wild wind. “It hurts to see yellow stalks flattened in the mud,” laments Wu’s wife. Daily, the local people float lanterns downstream, they say to drive calamity off. A single blackbird, soars, disappears, devoured by clouds. 37 �“Cool and easy on city walls” Warm rain and me napping by the window. Blissful drops. Peace itself. I look out on my hill, a maze of tender greens For a moment I think I have no further requirements. 38 �“Why would I long to be the great p’eng bird, flailing in the wind, plotting his southward journey?” Rain has beaten down the blossoms. Morning sunlight – a vague reminder. That moment, so elusive, poignant, familiar, it must be death. 39 �So different from your clepsydra, your spluttering lamp, your thrice-cawing crow Gathering chestnuts in the still-misty rain. A blue jay caws, high-pitched, sweet. “It must be a young bird,” I think, recalling last night’s strident one. Suppliant leaves in helter-skelter piles. Gentle flowers, two or three. A bushy squirrel (its gorgeous tail) absorbs me for hours. 40 �In withered grass, the falcon’s eye A workman left his hat on the far side of the painted fence. It’s been days since the group of them finished (disappeared). Each morning I check. “Is it still there?” I wonder. Funny. I worry about its brim. 41 �The nattering sound of a waterfall Green grows (the rushes grow) their greenness stark. Fat slugs munch the likes out of every kind of leaflet. Come dawn, I’m combing them off, carting them down to the river. Raindrops spangle the swaying leaves along the canal by the bridge. 42 �Half a husk Fish shop, tavern, brothel. Ikkyü’s days are notorious. “Saucers and daffodils broken in the moon.” “How quaint,” I think till my eye falls on a hill, its flabby jaundiced grasses. Hear me. I’m telling you about . . . But you’re drunk. I’ll come back. 43 �In Nam Yi’s memory5 Neighing in the wind, a white horse tied to a willow. The old general dreams he treads the front in mountainous snow. O Nam Yi. Your gleam in the dark, so seminal. Only this minute do I lay it aside! 44 �Mountains line up A bell tolls and the day breaks over the creek. I close my text but remain in my chair, listless. Birds flit about. The world is definitely awake. I want to be awake. What is this resistance that strangely creeps in? 45 �Gentle rosebuds, a whole cluster at varying degrees of openness I hear the rain through the spring’s deepening night. In the garden, threadlike, it greens the amethyst’s silk. Beneath the leaves I wander (breathe the robin’s wily song). Here and there I pet a soaking flower. 46 �“With their inquisitive necks and long tails” It’s quieter, I think, in town. Or can be, these days of scorching heat. Seething insects ravage the forest hills. Down here at sea level, a breeze picks up. I watch my greed. Even one flutter excites it. 47 �“The sudden moon alarms mountain birds” After diving into red lotuses, a cormorant soars over clear water. Feathers sleek, fish in beak, it stands erect on an old drifting log. Poet, you describe the water bird with such accuracy and passion, yet isn’t it the log you have come to feel is yourself? 48 �Cheerful tulips, after a week, tight as a nut I have a lovely view of the garden when my blinds are open. A slender snake, suspended from a twig, arches in the air. A bee is sniffing a gathered bunch of flowers. (A striped tree snail waves its delicate horns.) Water from the well is milky, sweet, and so cold it sets your teeth on edge. 49 �A great bittern flies sluggishly away (digs its way through the air) Here is the place where hayers cross the river. A flowerless meadow, ragged like the people. Creatures give in. “I’d rather sleep,” the world seems to say. “North of the river, south of the river, so many hills!” 50 �Buckets of cockles, buckets of clams Drifting off to sleep, lulled by the boat’s gentle motion. I feel it along with the moon’s melting warmth. The body stores memories, hums them like lullabies. O mountain, your ten-thousand stories! 51 �The sweet-toned kalavinka, even while a chick, surpasses in voice all other birds I like you, Gensei. (I too have been a silverfish.) I appreciate the thief who only covets brocade. The bustle of nine great avenues quiets me like a baby. Vast and empty. I look out. See myself. 52 �A good hard tree, while still below ground, puts up shoots over a hundred spans Nakano’s two sons, Zenkyu and Jōkan, died of smallpox early one spring. Nakano wailed, cursing Heaven (longing for his sons). Suddenly he changed: “Since their birth I’ve never rested. Their death has released me from this affliction.” People rap on rock, beg for rain, invariably get a response. “Your bamboo has grown so fast,” remarks a visitor of my little plot. 53 �The lamp doesn’t go away Black and white shells. The beach unpalatable. The surf ’s neck is a little ruffled this morning. People walk by. A robin’s egg nests in the crotch of a maple. All day, under it, I lie with a book. Doze. 54 �Look at them, by the fence, multiplying like rabbits The rains stop and suddenly it’s summer. The scent of jasper fills me. My neighbor’s melons topple into life. Beads of dew form on taut, squeaky cabbages. Chickens and dogs wander leisurely about. I am certain that the constant scratching of chickens stimulates the land like some giant massage. 55 �Such a charming scene. I’m surprised when you say, “Hand me a bottle first.” The grass is gold, outcroppings black, on the path leading to my cabin. Fissures in the raw-edged hill sprout queer (maniacal) roots. Rowing idly in my boat, hanging laundry in the sun — tonight for the first time, I sit without a fire. The noisy meandering of young people on their way to and from the riverbank. 56 �Sprouts and sweet ferns nibbled thoughtfully Luscious morning. The rain has stopped and sun, finally, crackles in the sky. Locust blossoms perfume the street (they’re not only beautiful, they rightfully command attention). Young blue birds try out their wings. Frogs squat on leap-full precipices. They peep at intervals. One begins, then the whole pond sounds. 57 �Violets everywhere – some purple, some lilac My little pond is spiky with thinly-growing greens. At its edge I’ve set up poles for melons, beans, and squash. It’s taken time to clear the land. (Small stones are still a nuisance.) While the weather is hot and evening’s beautiful, I bathe in the company of wild ducks. 58 �Tattered by years of playing dress-up A bent arm – my pillow – gazing at the sky. It’s summer. After-rain dyes the organdy clouds. Calling cranes play on the lake. Spotted turtles sleep. As the sun sets, five recently-hatched birds disappear into the reeds. 59 �Horses’ hooves fragrant, on returning from trampling flowers I thought I heard a blue jay, then a whole slew of them pecking at my young persimmons. “What gives them the right!” I think rising to shoo them away. Clear day, yard silent. A soft breeze cuddles the summer daisies. “How are you, dear?” whispers my tired mother’s voice. 60 �Pale loquats above the western hill The evening air is wholesome. (From my window, a white-jade sun.) Every bit of color has been buried in its whiteness, innumerable shades beneath glistening ghostlike pools. Water purls down a winding creek. (You can count the little fishes swimming along the shore.) Yesterday trout. Today shiners. 61 �No dew, no dewy cobwebs. Indigo sky. White clouds drift your depth. I, between you and my patch of jasmine. Great white boulders lounge beside the stream (from afar the meadow seems snowcapped!) Wintry peaks, clouds, meadow, and me in my soft summer dress. 62 �Never lowing, but looking as I pass Freshly bathed I walk to sea. Behold the silky dunes. Crimson ice plants in an angled sun glow violet, deep violet. Tiny wooden planks coil through the maze; leafy succulents grow fat. One small bird twitters on a rock. 63 �“Which send out large, knee-like limbs, near the ground” Tight and bright, summer stars tinkle in blackness. Toads, birds, the swampy pull of night on the shrub oak’s soul. Imminent rain. The air filled with expectation. Stepping lightly in my cotton shift, a surge of energy wells up. 64 �But it is still warm enough to wear summer clothes Evening winds bring rain, and me, walking, filled with so many thoughts. Under the bridge a boatman relaxes, his day about over. The twisting path to a viaduct is rife with grass and flowering weeds. Their beauty leaves me speechless. 65 �“He’ll never stick with it,” I assure myself A flowery crown. Gift of a summer breeze. Peach blossoms flatter an old head too. The problem is – their fragrance lingers. Years go by and I’m still under their influence. 66 �When I write, I find the color blue helps focus my mind while yellow gives me inspiration I wake. The room is clean. The sound of ocean and birds. Moon-season roses, their luxurious velvet entwine the wrought-iron rail. As I crouch to smell a pistil, on my face a sweet cool breeze. After a spell of smoldering heat, I can’t get enough of it. 67 �In numinous light the river raptly tranquil My small room has an eastern exposure. Cool in summer. Warm at dawn. A pair of lovebirds purrs iridescence throughout the long quiet night. Creamy roses, richly fragrant, merge their scent with the throbbing mist. A friend cut some and presented them to me in a vase. 68 �From amidst the all-producing dark-bottomed water Wood tortoises are numerous in the fields today. Young rice plants fully come to flower. Next to a hedge, untended for some time, black-winged dragonflies dart above the paddies. Their motion, just now, is unspeakably soothing and promising. 69 �An owl has pecked the forgotten kimono to shreds “Chise’s hair is done in the ‘poppy seed’ style customary for young girls,” my book on China says. Most of her head is shaved except for a tuft tied with red cloth. What a sweet sight, little Chise, politely greeting her teacher, on an early summer morning. It is a part of me I can barely recall. 70 �Back from fishing Acrid yet fresh. Life fresh. (That certain not-yet putrid.) Boat, body, bay, all dressed in it. Can I wash it off? Herons can’t. The sea’s insignia, in blood till death. 71 �Wild rose, wilder with the glow worm At a suq, was it you I thought I recognized? Not the meat, the fruit, nor fattened greens. Your fleeting face, or was it mine, behind a gauzy curtain, the bazaar deserted, it being after dark and about to close. 72 �Lamp low on the altar Leaning on the sill. Me and the moon. Off and on the firefly’s light, reminding me, and again reminding me. Turquoise sky, reflected in the lake, shivers in patches through dark dewy foliage. The lustre of night, then suddenly, its failing charge. 73 �A tired bird, a worn out fish, these are my friends now that I’m a hermit Lunging from its cage, a crane, free now, soars beyond the hill. “My hives are at risk for there are no more flowers,” someone complains. I stare at the clumps of shivering grass battered by dismal rain. Flowers at dusk, shadows on their petals’ hair. Their blood, their roots, dark and rich. 74 �Her mouth, the mollusk about finished Clouds collect, but the sun, suddenly lively after torrents of rain. A day of doing nothing. I take a bath. Sleep. In the garden a pair of rare Chinese aspens have grown toward each other and intertwined their limbs. If you scratch one of the trunks, both trees tremble and their leaves start to flutter. 75 �I carry my futon to the west window A thousand crickets harangue the heat. The solitary duck. Its doleful cry. My gaze falls on your scarlet tulips, bright and crisp before you left. “Its flowers remain, retain some scent.” 76 �Listening to the threadlike rain, to San’yō’s BIWA, of course your heart is disturbed Stars glance off my perspiring body. I whisk it in a draft of thick dry night. Awakened by a dream, I study the far-off lights. Far, far, far. So far, yes, the way seems impossible. 77 �That deep place, water-blue Tall, spidery blooms trail lazily from pond plants. White, wild carnations are stuffed into pots. (So many!) I wander about the garden in the cavernous summer heat. I hear the dust drift through the sun’s departing rays. 78 �Burying jars to the depth of a lily bulb Shrilling toads, lethargic heat, the grunting croaks of bull frogs. Ringed by mountains, the city holds steam like a bowl. Crashing with thunder, a cloudbed blows over. (Its breeze-scattered wisps.) I climb a peak, watch the moon sashay across the valley. 79 �That place on the creek where cliff meets water Early evening. Boats coming and going. Wind cleaves the grassy sea. Birds stalk shoals, and me, like a crane, peering into the water. Deep between a tumult of peaks, a “cloud of old age collapses into twilight.” 80 �No one sees the wild rose reddening in the forest Gulls bask as you in your summer clothing sleep. Look! Your fishing rock is swarming. Purged by the dune, all-at-once vomited, every tributary bloated with flesh. Birds go home, their drifting notes deadened by the fog bank. 81 �And now with a lowering sky, but still I hear the crickets Boat homes sit in gritty lotus fields. Flowers smell sour (the water is dense and reeks of algae). Today rain. Unseasonal, heady. Drops shatter in the sand. I stir the duckweed with my long poky stick. 82 �Yearning for incense Wearily the bay, its surface steamy. I find a bench. Stare into the nubile haze. Undulations quiver. “This water is young water,” I muse inwardly. A boat, a crane streak across. 83 �Evaluating a hundred flowers This still night the water lies whitely. A wind stirs, carrying the scent of rye. A gigantic moon stalks the sea, throbs above the watchtower. The low sound of its horn, mud-carved, tall. 84 �Crabbily, bypassing the effulgent oxeyes Asleep this roasting morning, wallowing long and deep in a pleasant dream. The buzzing I hear, too comfortable to slap. Too lazy to dress, I languish in my gown, nest of hatchlings in the scrawny pine, eerily silent. 85 �A sudden rise of wind loosens my loose kimono A bolt of sun startles me from a dream. In the late silent morning, I hear the heat. As a result, though last night we parted in anger, I can blame my pillow for the crazed look on my face. 86 �The snapdragon, a slight blue flower in dry places The heat, an illness, hovers over the city. When will it break (release the cold sheathed in its underbelly)? Just yesterday I looked up at the sky. Tonight I walk by the sea. Clomp clomp clomp bang my clogs on the wooden planks. 87 �Where precisely is the racket? Two pines near the porch contain the breeze that sweeps the summer heat. The confusion evening closets, unlike that in my room. Birds whistle through the waning light. (Darkness settles softly.) I nap. Into my dream comes the sharp sound of go stones. 88 �Lashing their tails, grazing the mud, combing the ditch-side for coolness “Quick!” someone calls. “Put out the fire!” (A boy comes running with a sloshy bucket of water.) Through a layered canopy of hemlock, I spot the drifting dark debris. A horse breaks loose. Birds flutter off. Their boisterous noise as they block the afternoon sun. The banktops all have a pathetic look. 89 �Old lady deaf, her sons snore like pigs Sun and flies condemn the valley. Salad wilts. Milk rots. How many trees has the fire gobbled today? Choked with fumes, the cold bright sky. Blue smoke curls (lingering) above them. I wake up to the sound of ripe fruit dropping. 90 �Twigs of a young tree, scorched and blackened Streams double back, fire doubles back. Bleak across the sky, black wings, in the sober dusk. Homing swallows are also forced to double back across the hill. Mangy dogs, their cadaverous bodies, plunge through shrunken, crackling leaves. Father’s “hundred stalks of bamboo” are dead. He has completely lost interest in gardening. 91 �Picking a slug off a tender leaf, tearing the leaf, its dappled rib Black roots, black branches, black flowers, black bones. The fire takes all, leaving its footprints on a parched carpet. An unstoppable flame singes like a torch, blind, revolting, eating crassly like an idiot. Stuffed, its belly doesn’t swell. 92 �The flame emperor’s6 influence wiped off the earth, gone Ebullient creek packed with sand bags. Frogs, snakes, butterflies, like flowers ploughed at the meadow’s edge. The forest fire, a cannibal, its lonely meal complete. Yet in my heart, everything remains as it was. 93 �But orchids, their color so fresh on the hillside! Tinkling water, full-flowing water – at dusk birds frolic in the spray-filled mountain air. Next to the goatfold whole fields are black, bare of bushes and grass. Fire’s over. Prepare for floods. (We line the creek with futile-seeming sand bags.) Everyone is out trying to adjust, trying to breathe. (It’s awkward.) 94 �Waking from an illness, I part the curtains Fire-charred stubs point up as if saluting. A mountainside of charcoal fingers scolding god (“You bad boy!”). We nestled our temple in your thief-laden valley (jays steal everything). Now what! 95 �Shoot ’em (some say) Birds perk up. A dusky sky is it? Strong sun will stop all but a jay. Cheeky birds with steel nerves (though their caw ironically soothes). They’d eat milk if they could. 96 �A dove’s white fleece christens an ewe, beady with sweat Needles prick the water. Baby shoots come up. Come up tall, please. Tall and slender like your mother. Nevermind the drought. The Lord of Heaven will take care. He’ll order A-hsiang to haul our her cart. She’ll sing for the last time.7 97 �Gulping the wind, inflating himself Dusty sun, dusty sky (columns of dirt rise). I stand absolutely still, savor a momentary flurry. Everyone hugs the river. (People just want cool air.) All the breezy spots are packed. 98 �I stuff myself with river mussels “A sparrow may live alone unable to nest in a parasol tree,” observes Yu Xuanji referring to herself. “I heard one chirping at sunset circling the woods in vain,” she adds. Incense trails by my hilltop door. Night frogs are extreme. Ancient pines, twisted, gnarled, tower over the lake. 99 �The bay seems crass as I swerve along its limb Heady, the air, thick and wet with pent-up rain. Kruck-e-rarrh . . . kruck-e-rarrh . . . cackles over the sea. Shorebirds stalk the shallows (their jaundiced caws through the cool red sun). O wild goose. Please don’t fly away. Your stiffening body fills me with remorse. 100 �God’s tired body Poor sparrow. A dot of red plus ashes. Immaculate rock, scored black as if whipped. “Was this punishment called for?” (A useless, perhaps vain, question.) The shape of the mountain changes, yet doesn’t. 101 �Eating little fishes Solitary traveler (your unwieldy sorrowful laugh). Timber line, moody, spindly, unnourishing. Yet I who draw you, satisfied, fulfilled. The right brush stroke, what a feast! 102 �I fall to the rear where my only view is the swaying tails of horses At sunrise the river’s bridge frames departing boats. Are they glad to be off? I wonder. Like a spent moth circling a lamp (my “dear one” suddenly gone). I’m back to yearning, my most constant companion. 103 �I didn’t realize it was raining I ashore, you adrift. What are we doing? My gaze follows you, placidly. We’ve parted before. The stages of sorrow I’ve memorized. The expanse of blue waves is impossible to fathom, lifetimes later. 104 �No shadow nor sound of river “Let’s go,” grumbles the servant. “It’s cold. I’m hungry. I can just make out the eagle who cruises Lone Hill endlessly.” Bulbous roots pop from flats, dank, mildew-smelling. The valley hurts. The warped sky bleeds. Sweaty rocks are slippery. But with you gone, I only hear the rain. 105 �“The stuttering blur of crickets quickens” A good night’s rain and the meadow expands. Sparrows riot in the silky, long-eared grass. The rivulet, tightened by unruly wind, trickles toward its mountain home. My tears do nothing to help it. 106 �The dumping sound of frogs on the river meadow Soft rain on a lovely breeze waters my gate’s four willows. Sumacs pale red, chrysanthemums gold, a wedge of wild geese shrill in the autumn sky. Beyond the lake, beyond the bridge, a network of streams flows haltingly. An occasional peasant walks on mud ridges, half asleep under her wispy broad-brimmed hat. 107 �The “long NGIM” (a dove announcing rain) should make the listener think of whispering Jumbles of willow flowers choke the babbling brook. Weary bees swarm beyond the clay-built fence. Young boys sell succulent little river fish right off their boat at the water’s edge. A west wind blows the damp smoke from their cooking fires back over the hill. 108 �Whirling catkins, flying petals Dusk. Waffled sea on barmy rocks. Treetops break, knock about in a crazy wind. While mowers have ravaged the once sweet-smelling grass, the sedge (like our love) withers tortuously. 109 �Green hills again like windswept fields of SUSUKI My hoya’s flowers are all over the floor. Little reddish balls, hard like beads. I sip tea, watch them roll around the porch, dreading the day I must lug it inside for the winter. 110 �Softly, softly, fresh wind, or is it my oar ruffling the lake? Drip drop drip. Last night’s rain, except for a crow, the only sound. The hill, with approaching winter, is emptied of all life. Butterflies, hummingbirds, squirrels – your absence so present. While flowers wilt, the temple gate remains closed. 111 �Golden puddles of ghee butter Sheer extreme color, so deeply deeply itself. I had intended to make a flower painting with these lavender-blue blossoms. Autumn foliage, now past peak, showcases an ivy creeper trailing from the pines. Its fallen leaves all have black markings. 112 �What happened to the moon in the enamored monk’s moonlit waters? Red fish in the ice-cold lake (crystal clear yet crinkled like a shoe). A sand bar gleams beneath threatening clouds. I lie on my back watching them unravel the northern hill. Your voice, when you courted me, comes to mind. 113 �Wine and cream My wife and children laugh and shout (your gifts tear down my household). Household-in-exile. Like monks, we’re never “home.” Twilight snow. Twilight mist. Saying goodbye was awful. When your package arrived, even the cats and dogs celebrated. 114 �BOOK ONE Eating Little Fishes Part Two ��Unfolding , swelling, in the warm spring air Tulips! Tulips! Perky and white, yes. White life. Yes. Not the black life of my past. Flowers break this legacy. One flower perfectly fresh is my mother. 117 �It undoubtedly was Jōzō who imprisoned the roiling thunder Up the mountain, over the pass, between mud walls to the ravine (finally). Maples survive but the stream has long dried and there is no waterfall. Through the dawn’s stark air, one jay caws. Could it be the spirit of the monk who used to live on Cell Cliff? 118 �Frogs, the birds of night Snuggling in (“for the long haul” it feels) or at least the thought is delightful. I tug the sheet around my ears, sink my body into its shroud. Wind sweeps through the garden, a relief, will the heat break? I am still. Absolutely and entirely one-pointed in stillness. 119 �Chirping with great depth Everyday the workers in the village boisterously lunch. “Bago, bago! Chalo!” midst mud, stone, fruit, laughter. I listen to a brook, a sweetly-calling bird. Half the time I’m swatting flies. 120 �Mallard hen with her nine . . . suddenly eight . . . ducklings Little dog. You’re going to die here in the mountain. Passers-by have pity but what can they do? When we head out . . . but that won’t be for a week. Our pock-marked hands, washed and washed and washed. 121 �The flags all have their stars in the wrong place Touching the untouchable in the silent night, my sleep stuporous, drunk with abandon. The puddle of water in which I wake, leftover from a fight. Day and night, battles consume all my energy. 122 �Fishermen and wild birds go home A grove of eucalyptus shields my room from sun. I’m glad. I welcome dark, rain-drenched days with their drip, drip, drip. Pungent tea, roasted rice, plunging-silence, heavenly. From across the lake a lone loon laughs. 123 �A few sprigs of pink brighten the north shore You pole your boat carefully, afraid of splashing the flowers’ red blouses, oblivious of the greedy jays who scour the valley like thieves. My devotion too seems vain (vanishes with the wind). One day I’m all vows. The next, plucking and lacing dandelion necklaces. 124 �Before the altar, the lamp Seals flabby on their burnished rock, slopped together in one debauched pile. White dragon-edged waves, whoosh . . . cease . . . whoosh . . . Each displays its hot curly tongue, lashing, fizzling, vanishing. I pity myself, this brutal mirror-image, reflected so unfeelingly back to me. 125 �Holding mountain heather, the young girl’s eyes at the meadow’s divide Strange, Gensei, that you, a monk, should visit the deity of business activities. Probably it’s more that Inari Hill has such unusual beauty. Once maple trees, now smokey wisps at the meadow’s edge. The road ends – not at a place. 126 �Sunny room, thick carpet, the silence of midday birds Slow day, slow to start, slow to shape itself. I panic (an old feeling). “Don’t move,” I sternly say to myself. (A lizard scoots across the floorboards.) I watch the larvae of butterflies eating cabbage leaves anyway. 127 �“The dark moss already bears my print” One jay caws. The forest and my heart resound with memory. Not of jays, but of myself, not yet ready. Not yet not. 128 �By what luck is it, your child Distilled in dew, the wood’s fragrance through my window. Water drips; cool blue clusters droop from wisteria high above my head. Hauled up in my room, I perform my practices diligently. In the rosy light, my haggard face. 129 �White lily in her devil’s needle cloak Young shoots through an old fence. That’s me, the fence, trying to keep people away. I tell them I’m celibate. I say I’m a monk. Raindrops, dewdrops, the sodden leaves outside my gate. 130 �The sky, deaf to blood-choked supplication Deposed, exiled, death’s next, right? No wonder you’re so fascinated with the “nightingale/king.” Born in the north, seeking the south, endlessly seeking the light of the south. Hey Sam-mum. What do you know about netherworlds? 131 �“A coarse but filling meal that has lingering flavor” In the valley men sit in forgetfulness. Dallying for awhile, flowers shake and fall. “I’m old,” I think. “In an old woman’s body. But beneath the flavin skin . . .” 132 �“That’s little White’s voice. What a pathetic whine!” I’ve decided to be a hermit. Right where I am. Why not? Who said a hermit needs a forest? My two rooms, one free of clutter, one small and filled with all sorts of little objects. These “four walls” will serve quite well. 133 �Red and luscious hill Chestnuts, persimmons, taro over a foot long. Chickens fresh, plucked by Mr. Wang. Lamb and beef dirt cheap. Books easy to borrow. With all this, Su, why do I see you twirling your whiskers? 134 �The hill’s dead grass, why do I care its precise shade of yellow? The true shape of Lu-shan is known and heard by you, Su. The structure of sound and water is fixed. You yourself don’t even have the question. “How will I explain it to the others?” an affectation Lu-shan will correct. 135 �Cloud-covered trees to the eye look like clouds You, Su, and the field mice nibble at the clay man. Dried-up like a turtle, you don’t need a well’s wisdom. Large Seal characters. The song “Wild Geese.” Doesn’t a mountain home mean you’re free? When was the last time you thought to pay for your own greens? 136 �Blue butterfly, you’ve left your twig empty White smoke rises. But that’s a mirage, a dream stemming from desire. The truth is, I’m lost. Cold and hungry, I find no evidence of life. Wind cracks into silence. Mountains evolve into clouds. I trudge through the pass, relying solely on luck. 137 �Turtle boat, are you really iron clad? The moon will dye anything with its light. A celadon blossom fades along with the rest in an evening’s glow. Its shadow may hold fragrance, but color, light, no way. “Do not pull my sleeve, drunken man.” 138 �”What’s on top of Mount Zhepai?” they ask, knowing it’s a poet’s grave A desolate breeze stuffed with summer. (I write idly. A line here, a line there.) Down the gutted hill, melting snow in splintered sun. A flushed-gray sky withers into dusk. Willow fluff scatters. I envy the brook rushing southward toward the horseman. 139 �Please take care of your skinny horse Up the slope, black hat bobbing. Your threadbare robe couldn’t possibly protect you from the chilly night. Old man, scabbard (like a babe in arms). Watch out. The demands of the hour can easily make you forgetful. 140 �Low wind and no mosquitoes make for a very pleasant afternoon Summer rain. Fields darken, trees lighten. A neighbor’s spade, its steady beat, as I doze off. I touch my ferns, blow on them softly. In the soft night air they bob back. A wind chime tinkles – after the storm, truly delightful! 141 �The galaxy too is present for it Did the breeze wake them up or did their chatter (finally) . . . Jealous, the wind comes around, if only to eavsedrop. Frogs holler. The creek trips over itself. Turtles reach out their necks. It’s autumn they’re wanting. 142 �While the brook, raised by the late white rain Today a group of swallows made a loop above my beans. Circling, and again circling, they swerved off to a tree. My checkerboard plots are tidy, but as a whole, the land does not feel “laid out.” I’ve purposely kept it brambly, unkempt. 143 �In evening, magpies White herons tip. A pair in the evening sky. I gasp. Their flesh, their wings, their purity, their sheer size. Phantom clouds on an eastward breeze carry my teacher’s ashes. As summer trees wither, I struggle to pray, to keep my mind focused. 144 �The path is steep, but my hilltop cabin, what a joy! My garden reeks. Flower after flower pulls for communion like a priest. A flute from an open window induces stillness after a gentle rain. Scents, distinct, yet one fathomless fragrance in the darkening night. Savor me, savor me, each with its lingering promise. 145 �A mountain breeze poofs my summer kimono In a certain century (when could it have been?) . . . I too yearn to live as a recluse. It rains. I sew. I sip some bowls of tea. Green pigeons coo long after swallows sleep. 146 �My room faces an eroded mud bank I live silently (I almost said “alone”). I don’t need a dog to keep me rooted to the earth. I have clothes, assorted gear, various pencils and pens. I love rain, but human-generated noise irritates me no end. 147 �I pick a flower, only THEN, see my folly When I became a monk, you bet I sought escape. As it is, I turn my eyes to the sky’s edge twelve times a day. A wave of longing subsides, only to be followed by another. I came on a whim. I should have known better. 148 �Edge warped upwards, each great gill holds half a gill of water My thin body, gaunt cheeks, so familiar, finally recognizable, sere and brown along the riverbed’s flashing summer air. “Here he comes, Master Ryōkan, skinny as the season’s first sardine!” 8 I wonder if this is how people talk behind my back. 149 �Peach-size in a peach field With ordinary monks I have nothing in common. Spines straight, legs crossed, sitting-robes fraying at the knees. Drowsy in the morning, I watch for awhile, yawn. Chores finished for the night, I brush my teeth and go to bed. 150 �The fine-toothed hills tonight Dirty clouds, pugnacious, slack, camel-back the green horizon. Polka-dot slopes darken beneath their termagant swollen cheeks. I’m late. I’m tired. Too disgusted to blame. Who cares? I’m going home. Tea and a bath are better than talk. 151 �“Life, Life, Life!” cries the bird as if he had heard A hawk sails low over the raw-smelling shore. An eerie moon rides the white tips of a boyish surf. I envy you Saikō, your musk ink and duck-shaped censer. When the wind plays with dragon whiskers,9 you make and keep an exact copy. 152 �Once the sun has set, nothing remains to trace its passage Fat birds at the windy corner. My oil lamp sputters low. Long stilled, the night in stark moonlight . . . Out of light into still deeper light. 153 �Hen’s-egg size, the ground nut I roast tonight A bell tolls. Another, smaller bell, bing-bongs pleasantly. As (utter) quiet pulls me toward night, a third bell opens my sleeping heart to the full moon. 154 �Waving little blue flags with five stars Autumn begins with the sound of wind, a coolness in the breeze. A few red leaves flutter along the road. I sit by my window, reading, dozing, soaking up the delicious smell. Calf-like fish romp the river, diving and playing, making lots of noise. 155 �“Try this!” the vendor touts, handing me a WHITE watermelon Like ice suddenly, sky blue-black (it was spring this morning)! A stand of pine shivers in its coat of brown. I stay indoors, light a fire with last year’s tinder. My dog growls. He feels the quake long before I am aroused. 156 �Marmots vanish in the slimy rocks The water stirs. Slinky waves inch up the beach. A magpie caws. I rush to my mirror. But the mooring lines hold only a boatman. The tide recedes. Its comforting swish is harder and harder to hear. 157 �Gnats on the blue-flag, its sun-fried indigo tip Glistening sun soaks into my futon. Airing it on the blue rail comforts me strangely. I stand behind the blinds wondering why I feel so pleased. Already a moth has spread itself out on one of the lumpy corners. 158 �The tinsel rain, will it turn to snow before morning? I know that autumn is here now, or close. (Each minute it changes.) But that’s how I know. Summer is steady. Heat cauterizes the personality. Hills bare, forest gone (whiter than ever with its small white flowers). The meadow recedes. No scurf on it. Only a browner color in barren places. 159 �At town’s end, the creaking flight of a grasshopper I stretch my ears. Perk up, listen hard to make sure. There it is. Nothing. No-sound. (I can relax.) Release with the thud of it. 160 �Near my door, the fragrant buds of sassafras root There goes a bittern over the meadow at evening. Robins chatter above the dandelions’ closed heads. A monarch, having basked, eking energy from a skimpy sun, flits upwards, only to flop in a pool of pine needles. 161 �Back to Ōtsu by boat A purple-flowered brook gurgles by the cornfield, signs of fish, signs of frost, willows sadly ravaged. San’yō died as per your premonition. How must you have felt, the same waters still murmuring as in the past. 162 �Girls pick hops amidst the bees While you describe the seedlings, short green shoots, the vegetables and wheat everywhere not yet picked. Alone, on the bank, his boat dissolves in the lake-haze landscape. More likely, you see nothing but your heart’s unbidden torture. 163 �Far off, “no bigger than a bean” (as the old poet said of a great ship, tall-towered) One jay, five, raucous squawks across the gully. I understand they speak to me, a self-acknowledged “jay person.” Scratchier at dusk, as if rejecting the balm silence offers. I pity you, little bird, your forthrightness just a bluff. 164 �O, I remember your eyes The leaf on my window, mottled, vibrant. Is it brittle? Seems not except for its cracked and crocked tip. As I stand in the sun, a gust of wind. (A shred of color clings.) I cannot bear it. 165 �Noticing the ants my emaciated willow has attracted Violet mountains, fine-grained air, the day breaks over the coastline. Sun warms the yellow butterflies straddling yellow flowers. Aggrieved, lost, your way (you say) ended with San’yō’s death, its grace, beauty, light, long committed to memory. 166 �“How much he knows of the wind – its strength and direction whose steed it is” Just before daybreak the river is pitch black. Waves, blown by headwinds, slap the boat’s big belly. The cliffs are covered with thick vegetation and so high they almost obscure the sky. Moored under a trellis, I lie back, listen to the lapping of the water. 167 �No chairs, no news, why bother visiting me? Lucky and alone. Yes. Soothing dark. Cold, clear candlelight. I pity the poor soul who chases after friends. Flowers, birds, the tired sun reluctant to say goodbye. Cows in pools of shadow listen to their flutter. 168 �White dew settles over the river The sun rises early in my mountain home. Slightly before it sets, the valley freezes over. A nightingale’s song from the woodland’s scrub, shyly, in broad daylight, reminds me of the depth of my isolation. 169 �The refugees of Ch’in are also called hermits Crying, a seagull flies away, carrying my cry to the earth’s edge. You are my servant little bird (like trees are instruments of wind). Old now, I’ve got nothing to do. My route, who knows where. It occurs to me to just stay in my room, but I lose my nerve. 170 �No one inquires whether or not they scatter One sparkling, one bleak, the days can’t make up their minds. I too, unfree from regret, at the monarch’s late departure. Saffron wings fluttering so gracefully, not anxious lest it snow. It grazes the hill as if it had all the time in the world. 171 �“Still the deer, searching for its mate, hesitates” My clogs are no competitor for last night’s storm. Rain mixed with sleet, or was it hail that knocked so crassly? Footprints on the beach (departing geese)? Sober wind flushes their drunken cheeks. Creeks gobble haze, passionately. 172 �Autumn grows old unnoticed year after year “A forest of white powder spreading jade-green heights.” And you, a monk, tracing their shadows adrift on your mat and bed. Of course you are content. Who wouldn’t lavish in the darkly moonlit colors, a single leaf tumbling through the courtyard? 173 �The bayou of her September’s coast, wild, surly, though tender (in spots calm). I don’t feel jilted (I tell myself ) inhaling its familiar rawness. Tide out, sand mangy but combed in little ridges. I am alone. I feel intensely alone, listening to the shrieks of village children. 174 �“Two gray hairs appear in the lit mirror” The wind howls and becomes old wind, the wind of another city. Yester-wind that once I faced, knees to forehead, in my tattered chair. That was a dark time. I felt close to the snow, its unprovocable stillness. With snow, even in a flurry, there was me, consoled, unbending. 175 �My land, flat and dry, same as before A rock, a duck, and I, alone at the landing. A child kneels at the water’s edge, its little body absorbed. Transfixed I watch the sea-graped waves splatter the beach with refuse. It’s hard to walk barefoot over this mess. 176 �Rabbits dart from rapacious hawks, naturally The sea hollers, slaps its prey with curly-tipped claws. Sprouting from the shore-cliff ridge, tufts of moss salt-bleached. I pole through the muck of overgrown creek, enjoying an hour of peace. The long low moon cradles a cow, cud on paw, dozing. 177 �When they cease, the winnowing sound of their wings In the deep lanes of quiet night, autumn hushed and still. Moonlight tracks the overgrown path. As wind bends the reeds and dew collects on the arching sprays of bush clover, the garden’s moss (its rippling waves of green). 178 �The “playful NGIM” is a swinging sort of vibrato evoking the image of fallen blossoms floating downstream Yellow plums. Green damsons. A stray narcissus, paper white! Cows (spotted) nibble the bluff, masticate the sea. Back from pleasant dreams, sunlight in the window fading. The sound of gentle sculling from the narrow shoal’s odd little boats. What gives me pause is the memory of my family. Though I never think about them, now, as it begins to rain . . . 179 �Next spring I’ll get a side-room ready Lustful branches stalk the windows made for summer wind. Lofty eaves greet winter sun. The birds are quiet, I’ve slept enough, but I’m too lazy to get up. Propped on a pillow I listen to the trees. 180 �“Old and settled,” I think, thinking I am thinking of the tilted floor, cracking paint Lemons ripen in her absence. Their leaves are silky green. Not rubbery. Not hard and knobby like the ones touted in the market. I gaze over the meadow. Herd sheep into the low-grassed highlands. Of course I want my childhood back. 181 �The “thread NGIM” is a thin vibrato Waves crash. It pours but is not cold. Shawl over knees, I sew near my window. Smokes rise through the elm tops. Butterflies toss in the wind. They probably expected flowers. 182 �“My feet are so cold. Won’t you please buy me some sandals!” A single leaf, drifting, falling. I watch it float, right, left, landing on dead grass. O leaf. What will happen to you now that you have no tree? Already I see you crumbling, edges fraying, holes. 183 �Dyed in baths of crimdigo flower Look at that tree, solo, crowning the fire-tarred hill. Glistening all bitter-dew, the flaring tips of grass! My grandmother sobs, “Oh heaven, let me die! Let me die!” I stand at my door (like a far-away wind). 184 �“He cannot be a hawk there, but only perch gloomily” I lean on my desk, listen to rain. Lightly, lightly the frail drops sink into the earth. The crow that howled this morning has its wings all folded and tucked away. Bolting the door I turn toward my bed, regretting the early autumn. 185 �Alfresco Autumn rain. Its tiny patter wakes me. Drip drip drip. So soft. Fragrant shade, hours later, still contains the sound. One drop splashes on my book. 186 �Late and hot I wake, tangled in my soaking sheets Water wild, greedy for its bath in the just-now pink. Deer – a hundred heads, swish like foam over the sand. One house, vacant, a manger suddenly. (Ants can’t swarm a corpse more ravenously.) O night hawk! Your dry, shrill, angry call! 187 �Pheasants call. What is my answer? Willows have frostbite. Rushes, broken, make the bank look stiff. I am fifty-nine today. (A ridge parts in the late-autumn hills.) Cows to the east, hay to the west. 188 �Your tender bottom, little leaf, bared by the breeze this October day A west wind scatters my hoya’s decaying blossoms. They disappear like dust littering the grass. I see them fall as I look up from my book, sun just lowering into late afternoon. 189 �“Frost a knifeblade killing back grasses” No breeze, no sweet scent from the bony sapling. A rooster crows; red wings flap across my grubby yard. This old body, I’m tired of heaving it up, flopping it down. It seems so clumsy, full of complaints, not much fight left. 190 �Not ill but growing thin Blue saplings laugh at so much rain. Their perky leaves flip into place, nada. Older limbs sag. A stubby branch rolls down the crag. The outcrop of water gushing below, nudges it. 191 �High geese over Long Huai River The debilitated sky. Why? (Useless question.) Sickly waves wash over my shore, quilted in dirty grey. I look out. See wild weeds and mud. The path to the white clouds worn beyond repair. 192 �Drizzle-filled trough – a heifer slobbers the filthy water Rain then. Go ahead. Pelt the stairs. Clink like jade. Hiss and hiss and hiss. Noon and shadow wrestle at my window. High winds rock my bed. I’m sick. Crimson maples could be crimson clouds (or even God) for all I care. 193 �Pardon me, my irreverence Sheets of rain hang from the sky, as if God forgot to fetch them. “Move that bed. Lift this chair. Put the cabinet here, for now.” Brother, don’t go scavenging. Please! (I know the dragons cough up fish.) Me and my rabbit can’t bear to be alone. 194 �Faceless rain Sea spray pounds. Not lightly, but like a hungry prowler. I would lodge it if I could, if I had the room. “How much would I ask,” I ask my heart as the window creaks. One red leaf sticks to the pane, chiding me. 195 �No pork left Alone I watch, while worries fill my heart. A single sparrow flits from branch to branch. I see it trying to get comfortable, its little body pitifully nondescript. In the leafy boughs, motionless (finally), it disappears. 196 �My cat lays down beside me and yawns delicately Fowl and a lone pine. (Tucking their heads under black-fan wings.) Light fades slowly. I stay and watch. Clouds drift westward, leaving the sky empty. No stars. No moon. 197 �The stream now in scented profusion Fickle sun. A minute ago . . . Drab colors emerge from the clothes of stumpy fishers. A magpie flutters and sails among the dark Mongolian oaks. I spread out my lunch, give thanks for the moment – (the blessed river’s flow). The water-level has dropped. The current is swift and fills me with terror. 198 �Me and Priest Shinkei Fog swallows the temple. Through the mist, arrogant grass. A low flying hawk, its shadow, in the shadow of the cove’s great rock. I watch the mountain envelop some clouds, tuck them in for the night. Slowly, slowly, evening permeates the meadow. 199 �Drowsily, but with a sweet feeling Autumn’s gone yet the oak leaves are thick and shiny. I lay awake at night. The moon has clouded over, increasing the shadows’ blackness. Rain brings cold. A scrawny swan skims across the lake. Autumn’s gone yet no foliage withers and falls. 200 �The long bank darkening Gulls dip. Like planes among cameo clouds. Night descends slowly, loathe to erase the sun. Wending through marshland, charcoal water, fiery, sleek. Here and there it just stops (which is odd for water). 201 �A blackbird flock opening above it, whitens the “robin snow” 10 Wind sweeps through the garden, a little chilly. Branches carouse, billowy drunk in the rushing air. I watch their tips sway, all topsy-turvy, as I lift my face to the delicate flakes, so driven and purposeful. 202 �The old man’s hair is thinning, I notice, by the shadow-licked light of his oil lamp Dozen of porpoises diving and surfacing, some black, some umber. River banks look sloppy with their snow-like, reed blossomed, flecks. Old monks, they say, use the fluff from these blossoms to pad their winter sitting robes. But a youth is scolded: “If at your age you’re already so concerned about keeping warm, how can you study the dharma?” 203 �A single bird’s continual call, shrill from its unseen perch At dawn the ground is white with snow . . . and it still snows. From the road I see an elk, woolly-brown in its thick new coat. A little after four, peeping lights in the village windows. In their sparkle – cold, clear, without redness – winter is palpable. 204 �I don’t need pigs “The peacock flies southwest” observes a woman-scholar poet. Others (of us) live close to the land. Land. Heart. To me they are the same. I can’t help it. I’m a city person. 205 �By the bluebird messenger Spring or once. I wasn’t there. I arrive in fall, as the trees leave. Some stay. The even-keeled, middle-wayers. That’s never worked for me. 206 �Blowing on my fingers only makes them colder Thunder, rain, the black bay quiet. Neither birds nor stars nor kites. Sirens and a few howls. Are they dogs? Afternoons are short. Without sun the air grows chilly. I’m fine until about three. 207 �I can’t explain it, even to myself Pink lights waddle like turkeys above the evening water. Twinkling in depth. Is it fall’s earlier coming of night? I walk along the bayside, surf suddenly foreign. You are in a boat. 208 �Listen to the leaves, unprepared and chilly Chrysanthemums, dahlias, roses, russet in her birth-month. I pick mums, their ochre evocative. O mother, so fathomless is my eternal love. Only a gesture . . . somewhat free, broad in spirit . . . 209 �“Wick cold, lampflame dark.” The poet bemoans her impoverished situation The air is freezing. (It is definitely winter.) Chunks of hill are bitter and brown. Exhausted grass slops over mounds of motley rain-exposed roots. My mother’s tired voice flickers at a memory. Retelling it cheers her up. Later she appears with a chicken, some roots of membranous milk vetch and Chinese angelica, which are considered very bu.11 210 �Anywhere tranquil is my home now A thousand up-and-down miles, eyes haggard from dust. My Chinese jacket has finally shed its half-torn, odd-colored sleeve. The moon hangs low. Is it full? Almost. At night, birds, descending from clouds, roost comfortably in the trees. 211 �Flowers fade, or is it one’s memory Stretch a wire over water, you’ll get small white-bellied swallows. Young rock maples, their crosses against the sky. A pine seedling juts into the mist, spindly, provident, a pariah on the brackish earth. It’s low steady hum, unlike myself, constant, intent. 212 �Gently rainman Tide in. Breakers crash, inky black at second watch. Penitent, scalded by cold, my wrinkled body, doused. But the open sea, its ragged surface, is green the color of mice, scurrying, scurrying, trying to get settled before the bad weather. 213 �Swallows low over the barren field The distant mountains’ distance. Yes. Warblers’ chirps so near. “White snow makes a high, thin music writing its poems on old temples.” Don’t be sad, my darling. Though silent, I’m here. A weak, slow-to-rise sun casts a pewter glaze on the rigid river. 214 �Birds and I have opposite schedules Low hills gray with drizzle . . . again. (Petals slobbered with mud.) An eclipse is due on the eleventh (some say) early, before dawn. Chimes clatter. “They need rope to shut them up,” I think, wide-eyed, under my covers, dreading to have to get up. 215 �The bittern too from his pine perch flies slowly away Today I watched the sky fill with puffy white clouds. How many months before the wildflowers reappear? Oceans of grass next to acres of water. Neither duck nor dandelion alters its carriage in the high tide. 216 �For now I work in pencil, softly, softly – mimicking the strokes of soft brush-hairs A winging swan on snow-soaked mud, bruises the print of its web. Remember the cranes jumping and laughing, corn tossed their way? Exuberance is short-lived, though like pain, its flavor fluctuates, the bray of a lame donkey worse than my own exhaustion. 217 �O’ the white wild spruce! “Sky blue” where I live refers to a child’s myth. The surf is never “forest” green. The emperor respects youth, so your age (you say) is shameful. What will you do when the water-clock drums yet another hour this winter night? 218 �Not ferocious like most guardians, but on the contrary, a friendly, naïve creature, easily fooled by magpies The sun sinks on my level fields. I shut my wood gate tight. Willow buds expand their silk these barren “finger cold” days. The willow doesn’t flower, exactly. It launches the first green into winter’s fully-brown landscape. “What harm if in the midst of loneliness . . .” 219 �O green winged-ant You say you’ll die. I say “I know.” Your voice perks up. It’s not bitter cold yet. But it’s December. (It could happen.) Churning whitewater among waves, the sun boils seething red. New sun, spared by the sated birds. 220 �Morning sounds dawn At a fork I take the highroad. (I live alone, above the trees.) A waterfall sprinkling my old thatch hut dissolves in waves of mist. Winter crickets sing. Crows and blue jays caw. All this and my stopped little body. 221 �Season of thin snow Who paints this cold mountain lilac? Who washes the clouds red-gold? I have lived here forty years. Browned by light, crisped by heat, a single leaf floating down the river-bed. 222 �“Are you personally closing the street?” a man asks Funny how life goes along and one allows it to flow without questioning. I’m appalled by my assumptions. Wind twirls across the plains; ice freezes on the inside of my window. Preparing lisn in my fish-shaped censer . . . 223 �Deftly, with your dark-purple, rabbit-hair brush Plum-white petals, tough green stalks sweeten the fuliginous dawn with their quick presence. I watch them, aware of my heart, fallow as the drab, cold day. Cropped waves slap the shore, slowly, methodically. A gull swoops off. At dusk, shadows of vetch. Long, long shadows. 224 �The osprey licks an apple’s eye Tired and cranky, the brassy sky, what? I just want to be alone with my book. The dappled terrace with its snowy beds, reddened, ever-so-soft. Yes, I say to the blackened moon behind the mountain peak. 225 �Old pout, your thousand fry cloud the water The older I get, the less I like people. I don’t blame the mothers of cooped-up kids for wanting to let them out. I can tune into a star, yes, me and the star, us two. For a second we . . . but it rarely lasts. 226 �Twigs and plumes, their twisted wind-blown postures Months fly by like shuttles, yes, in the main, in maturity. Add sadness, prayer (I’m sorry to admit) and “fly” turns to “creep.” So it’s one’s state of mind. “My fortieth year will pass as the morning comes,” merely a matter of calculation. 227 �I hear the peepers in the rain tonight I hear the creek, not the sutra. My fingers guzzle the warmth of my coffee cup. I unwrap the silk protecting the words of the Masters, but gaze long and hard at the fire. 228 �No rain on the hill, yet brownness seeps all the way to my heart The year is about dead. Aren’t you glad? Another year of indecisiveness. On the emperor’s command, you dedicate a poem to your forest friend. All at once, a signal, replete with how many refinements of meaning? Funny you stress the squawking of returning swan geese. 229 �Su says, “Hard to refuse three cups to a dried-up belly” Voices from other cabins occasionally drift my way. “These monks like to enjoy themselves,” I think, pleased I don’t have to join them. For food and drink I leave the hill, the lapping of the lake. Sunlight glints from muddy rows of lettuce. 230 �Stagnant sleet, laminated, pointed (like rice seedlings) Air thin, sky a galaxy unto itself. Stars (like snowflakes) romp and fall. The vast emptiness of the valley floor, so vast, mind-bogglingly vast. A storm brews. Nothing happens. 231 �Wintering at sea, a flock of flightless birds In my dream it is dawn, the year new. Bright shoots pierce the darkened earth. Sunk in the mountain, the scooped lake, silent. Plumes of pine, being frozen, remain as the wind holds them. 232 �Is it midnight yet? Quiet deepens. I walk in the moon. Hushed rays sadden. Their soft half-circle light. The thought of you emerges. Your woolen scarf. Your slender hands. A northerly wind swirls from the winter wood. 233 �The relief of clear blue sky Abyss of dark water, its hollowness devouring. Cold-stricken geese cry out in the frost. Riding a lean horse, scuffling fog, but for the moon, blinded by wind. Ahead of dawn, first to cross the ochre bridge, I rush to view the snow in South Valley. 234 �By a low lamp I trace the lama’s drawings Early evening. Snow falls softly. Thick snow sticks to my old fur coat. It sticks too to the bushy pine needles just like the Chinese masters depict. I pull my quilt around me, brace my book against my knees. Underneath the house, babbling quietly despite the cold . . . 235 �“The bleat of a babe,” my mother once told me Cedarwood fumes linger. A single bell. So many animals curious. I pack up your things, nail hinges snug. Sweep the floor, the entryway, the little stone path, free of dust. 236 �“Sheep’s intestine trails” likewise disappear as they treacherously wind around precipice and gully Engrossed in the tide. Washing me, washing me. Clean of sorrow. Clean of missing the future. A narrow fog hurries, overtakes some low-flying kites. “The Year of the Horse” twirls bravely like a trapeze artist. 237 �In another section of the scroll is a scene of an oxcart Wind moans through the branches of weed-ridden waste. Poplars moan in the wind. A deep reverberating pulse vies with the hush that echoes through the house. Looking over the shore, a white butterfly darts about, though there are no flowers. A spider broods, lost among bleak, frost-nipped reeds. 238 �Where is the walrus? In my dream, birds grow hair, silken plaits parading mountain wind. Sherpas’ feet face north across the bridge. Will they wake me? (This question on a flag.) I pity the monk who makes the last round, tinkling his little bell. 239 �Tiny glass horses Alone tonight, rain and wind wrack the bushes by my door. Their leaves, easily torn, provide me precious shade and privacy. I’m glad to shut the window, curl up in my sealed room. In the morning, black clouds roll overhead ominously. 240 �Alone, in the parlor, I play “lantern riddles,” a stupid Chinese game As the sun sets, wind whips the corners of my jacket. Flecks of snow sting my face, then melt and dribble down my cheek. Yibin stands on a hill overlooking a promontory at the confluence of two rivers. The rays of the moon scatter upon them masses of silver rings. 241 �Dunning black clouds, the sunset-coated river I love the quiet winter days. Rustling oaks the only sound. Sewing by a window, too languid to look up, tea and book on a little stand next to my housecoat. 242 �Dead oak leaf, fawn-colored ice prolongs your glistening From my hut, I hear the evening rain. Beside my door a tall pine drips. Friends in heart, but with the passing of years, what is there to say? When I force a response . . . 243 �Hodge-podge rain Silly gossips. Have they nothing better to do than watch an old man? I’m going to stick a flower in my hair if I feel like it. I hear you rattling around the kitchen. I hear the fledglings squawk. You bet I’ll make a nuisance of myself. 244 �“Stones are lean, mahogany and NANMU trees are strong” Bashō, as he lay dying, took his poems for worthless. This was not just posturing. Words, he felt, who cares? Yet each day I sweep my room, arrange my pencils carefully. Seeing them all lined up so simply . . . 245 �Asleep in a thistle, crammed deep in its dense florets Dreams fit-full, the morning bitter cold. Rain pours down in axle-sized shafts. In the distance, pine tips, chimney-like through clumps of red-eyed clouds. I picture Yen Tzu-ling alone on his rock, the gibbons, their moonlit howls. Such a feeling of coming back! 246 �Cockle-shell so far from sea, how you roar Harsh winds lurch, judder, collide with everything. Pellets of sleet, like moths against my cabin door. The manzanita’s limbs, look how they twist in hair-brained directions. Incessantly inscribed, incessantly erased, on the glassy lake. 247 �Dead birch tree, your fungus shelves the snow My mind grows freer with the passing years. No patience for the Three Obediences.12 But like a giant floating-heart, adrift between empty banks, a bowl of wild plants eaten, discarded . . . 248 �Little twig, ice varnishes your yellow insides White winter sun leaves me hungry. Or is it longing I feel, alone in my wild yard. Ten years of drought, then torrents all month. Koi snap at the stones I toss. 249 �We step on mud, two pair of clogs Rain about to let up is rain at its best. No rain isn’t. Hard rain isn’t. But rain, having spent itself, beckoning sun, bird, a shrouded mountain suddenly bald. 250 �Plowing thin land Rain pelts the wall-wide glass. (I sit here staring at my bleak garden.) Patches of snow lay on the ground. Trees are wrapped in straw. Ten thousand peaks (prayer altars dismantled) – demons of pestilence lurk in their muggy vapors. Each day, departing flocks, amid unseasonally cerulean skies. 251 �“Knowing that friends are coming, I use my foot to clean around the wicker gate” Why complain of loneliness and seclusion when a hermit’s life is what you seek? Sparrows frolic, roosters crow, so what? To be one of a tribe of mountain birds floating by a cliff, you needn’t be a mountain bird. 252 �The helmsman’s face, ashen Rising sun displays a vibrant morning clarity. Songbirds chirp around my tree. The ceaseless rains, at the year’s end, end. For a while it helps. 253 �Pien Luan’s sparrows O my son. Do you really care about the wind of which you write with such passion? The river gulls, the south pond lotus, the north hill that sends up purple shoots? Why should I doubt you? (That would be your answer, of course.) I, who managed to lose the river’s poem. 254 �Wind and moon13 Why fear the acts of lazy, careless women, even ones who rub musk ink in light shades, aslant-aslant? A goose might poop on your freshly swished plantain, but the ink that smears, nothing is lost. 255 �“Roofed not with crossing boughs but drooping ice-covered twigs” And idleness, what’s its sound? (I was about to say “noise.”) Sitting in these empty woods peacefully, so peacefully. I carve my spoon (sand its bowl), select some branches for my altar. Falling snow. A late goose calls. 256 �No birds, no moon, my cold hand reaches for the flashlight Cocoon-paper clothes. Mountain-grown rice. Your hut in the clouds at the top of Hsiawushan peak. But what hut? What clouds? Nothing is so neat and tidy. A toothache today, headache tomorrow. “Where did that gust come from?” 257 �You, Su, for not daring to free the prisoners “Ending my days,” the state of mind of which Su speaks. I doubt he really believes it. He who knows more about rivers than the ferryboat-man. Parched earth clings to his shadow. 258 �The toppled cart had how many apples? “Why?” someone asks and I list all my possessions. My crowfoot spoon, coyote mat (I know it died for me). These things are obstacles. Like river-stones, fallow. After I’m dead, I’ll call for them in my sleep. 259 �The sky’s five moods Little salmon-colored petal, drenched (almost drowned). Perhaps this is your final spin, your last hapless bout. I too am close to the end, floundering, tossing (like a frightened mother bird). Alone in my cabin, full of light, white with frost. 260 �I wait as winter deepens The rain stops, the long bank looks greener. Stone rain. (Gutter, a drum.) I catch its beat like a cold old lady. Curtains reek tiredly, little life left. Spray from the wall smells like frogs. 261 �A river frog snores from deep in the blue earth A blank sky (a belligerent sky) sits stubbornly above the surf. Chimney swallows, high & slowly over the river. Growing old in a desolate room, keeping the blinds pulled down. Rather than consolation, I try to accept there may be none. 262 �Cold glitter on the village vanes Brutal cold impacts both the day’s edges. All I want is to hole up in my room. I wake at dawn, put on my slippers. Rosy lamps make me even more comfortable. 263 �Gelt, the effervescent folk, wildly The day smitten with clouds, yet the pervasive hope of sun, unbidden. Shadows clothe the river shabbily. Birds cry, abandon their treetop nests. Only lashing waves reveal the winter’s truth. 264 �“Icy-skin-stony-bone” 14 O Saikō, no one could think that your senses have turned to ash. Your hakubyō 15 bamboo take away my breath. A tree’s white ghost with its ostrich plumes. “We all regret that spring is not longer.” 265 �The clock, the kettle, rat-a-tat-tat Scarlet maples, stoic pines, but mostly scrub oak fill my forest. A cerulean sky floods the banks of my deep draw. A monk in the wild sits quiet and relaxed. A crow’s silhouette couldn’t be more still. 266 �Who’s got food that I’ve got it in, His Soul The stillness of the body, of the mind in pain. Who can know? It’s so private. The heart beats (which one feels acutely). Unbidden, entirely mine. 267 �Am I riding a great white bird? She doesn’t budge. No. Occasionally she peeks out the window. Inside her fat is a silent life. Listen. A gong sounds as she rises. Which direction will she go? 268 �Moveable feast Heavy quiet. Obese. Unmovable like a fat woman. One moves, but “it” doesn’t move. “It” is still. So still, it hurts. I want this stillness more than anything. 269 ��B O O K T WO Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms ��The 1500-Round Poetry Contest In order to clearly see the varying greens of last year’s grass, young Kunai-kyō nearly died. The other participants, long excelling in poetry’s ancient Way, how can their vitality be explained? 273 �ISLAM, ALLAH, I had them confused Winter ends. And my nap. (I’m sprawled like a drowsy hermit.) Work, a week away, hovers over me like a toad. “How’s your sleep?” I ask my mother. “Huh,” she says, “Freeze?” “Sleep,” I scream. (It began as a concern.) 274 �A XIN from far off Restless chimes from an easterly wind. (I listen from my bed.) A cat hollers. Terror shivers up the breezeway. A neighbor hacks, coughs, spits out phlegm. “Nurse, nurse,” he cries. But at the time the incident slipped my mind and I forgot to ask about it. 275 �“Incense smoldering beside monks deepens” Kingfisher-blue, the canopies of pine cropping the mountain’s north slope. In mist adrift on empty wind, tiny jade-green bamboo leaves. Dew rises, stars come out, tree-tops blacken in the night. Sitting in a boat, rowing quietly among ripples, I’m forgetful of the crabby cars and oceans of people at my back. 276 �Her hair, deeply black, like the seeds of a leopard lily “Earthworms come out!” The chubby girl probes their underground knot, all twisted up together, sleeping. “From little green worms come black-tipped butterflies.” (I instruct the child carefully.) A brilliantly clear day. The air is soft. (We stand near a swathe of iris.) As the temperatures change, the smell of avocado in bloom mixes with the rich smell of recovering soil. 277 �Woolly blue, undulant, stark Our bitter fight over, I go to my room. My philodendron, my lacquered chest – what was I thinking? How can I pretend to have my bearings? The pretty hill, with oncoming night, more and more blurry. 278 �Boat half-filled with river water Buckets of rain, then gradually-softening drops tap my midnight window, fingernail-moon obliterated. Alone I listen. The drips, drip-drops (luxurious), and dropping off to sleep, spring rain sweeping a blue-green meadow. 279 �Forked sparrow tails poke the apple leaves at dusk Awake, I listen to the blustering storm crack and expel its waters. Drops splatter, fading the peacock on my Chinese screen. Leisurely, thimble in hand, I quilt away the afternoon. Hearing the birds gives me loads of energy. 280 �Foxglove, grain, we’ll farm anything Silver grass. Insect song tightens. Its wheeze in the temperate night. I loosen my belt, make ready for sleep. The lights are dim in my little room, but the fury on his face, its rapture luminous. Thinking about it as I doze off, I blurt out something. 281 �Cherry-green, plum green, the hill rammed with new growth The rain has stopped but its after-drip, hours later, thump thump thump. I stretch my legs, “I’ll just listen to the pleasant sound,” I think. When I wake, a crescent moon peeps through the slat of my half-opened blind. Precipices along the gorge are covered with gigantic rattan creepers which make the eerier atmosphere even more eerie. 282 �Look! You can almost grab a cattail Poppies wind-dance by the curly water. Green ducks bob, expressions banjo-player bland. Steady rain. How many hours will it last? Ducks, a mirage on the field of floating duckweed. 283 �Rosary hour: your sweet cross of lilacs Spinnakers surf the blue-grey waters, playful, buoyant, hailing forward. Shouldering day-lilies, a scarlet wing extends the fragrance of oncoming night. I stare at the horizon, its mocking sheen forcibly in my eyes. Head achy. Body numb. No taste for the book I thought I couldn’t wait to finish. 284 �Lean-to in the clouds You look like an old woman, hill. Parched, cracked. Winter storms were ruthless this year. Johnny-jump-ups once protected your bed. Now everyone just dumps trash on your decaying floor. 285 �My young mind, having trotted about in its elephant pajamas I choose modern colors for my spring planting. Things start to bloom. I get very excited. New life rungs of warmth and summeriness caress the eastern ridge. Fiddleheads swill. Fresh shoots sprout by a gushing river inlet. One squirrel busily scrambles across. 286 �Feed me rice The pinks! Lucky household ploughman! Whereas the dye lot of a peony arouses Shylock’s greed. Wind, grass, moonbeams, spread their tints and fragrance freely. Peonies are pedigreed alright, but who can afford them? 287 �Mountain birds, O lovely, lovely I watched a butterfly this morning, carefree, nonchalant, poke about the eucalyptus, a wispy little alone thing. What unheard sound stops him, still as a bush? The light of a train, the light of a star, just after dark, brattles in the sky. Mandarin clouds, several clumps, their purity through the cold. 288 �A beautiful home but for its silly curtains The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass. “Duck-egg blue,” Kawabata might say. His flat unrhythmed lines pad their way, event to event. A precision mind, though it’s said he couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t rest. Isn’t that odd? 289 �They fly up, separate For fun I toss young pigeons breadcrumbs. Some coo. Some ostentatiously flock towards the fountain’s spray. They strut. I watch (look more closely at their fat audacious paunches). Like trees in wind, blossoms after rain, uprooted, disturbed, lost. 290 �Turkeys prowl the snake-filled blades Houseboy, I saw you kiss a maid last night. Now, this morning, the hallways are a mess. Though guests still sleep, their orioles sing. The lake’s green water sags with fallen flowers. 291 �One can hardly call it a garden I begged for some cuttings. Sure enough they’ve taken root. Growth itself, albeit leaves, intensely satisfying. Each day greener, larger, more shapely, self-assured. I’m not kidding. 292 �Lavishly capping the rosebuds Alone I watch the fluffy sun unfurl over rain-washed hills. Its pinkness at the curved-edge bridge, pliant yet forthright. Feeble peeps from over-slept birds, the hardy ivy, vermillion. I’m dazzled by it. Want to dress up, go out, get all wet. 293 �“Half the dresses you brought to our wedding are still new” Stoic red, one rose blooms in the naked yard. I want to steal it. I want to take it home, put it in a vase and make it last. “No one lives here. It’s just a wild rose.” (Of course I know better than to “take what is not given.”) I sit in my car. Spend a half hour arguing with myself. 294 �The call of a stag, far into the night Yellow birds and more yellow birds on the late-willow catkins. At evening, not a breath of air disturbs the skaters’ tracks. Cascades of flowers cover the trees, nubby branches tremulous. A few stars prick the blue-black sky. 295 �Pocking the inlet, a thousand ducks, evening wind shallow Twilight peepers start, stop. Tiny cow lily. Your petals creak on the pond’s still water. Wind chimes hushed, crickets settled for the night. With everyone asleep, the grandfather clock’s tick. 296 �“Twiddling a brush, I write down thoughts, that’s all.” Shards and stones, brambles waist high. Who is leaner, me or the soil? Boats and trash mingle. (Winds sough through a lightless village.) One black duck surfs the shallow tide. 297 �Waking from a nap I turn away “I hacked off my limb to avoid the draft,” an old man says, right sleeve dangling. “I’m the only man I know who’s lived to enjoy old age.” Armless, full of pain, but hushed with fumes of late night mist. Proud (nay arrogant) at fifteen (let’s say), for what cause would I . . . with a big rock . . . 298 �Deciding to sleep one more hour The moon and a frail wind scan the lake. Nosing up, a big fish quickly corrects itself. Dark tides tap the scarlet flower whose blossoms it lures away. I lay back, shut my eyes, enjoy the company of the canoe’s shadow. 299 �Two, coupled, trilling in my hand Older even than sea-shells, knobbly kelp sloughed in with the tide. Ancient waves shisel the sand beneath the wharf. Crevices become pools, rivulets estuaries of beaded soil. Beneath a girly poster, farting, pot-bellied men. 300 �In spring, cutting wicks Barnacles suck the wharf ’s underside, eat the moss like bread. Gulls hover near the fly-fisherman’s bucket. At dusk, through the fog, the sloshing water swells. A bright-orange moon keeps me from feeling alone. 301 �Tempered in a hundred fires Willows, like “dancing waists,” bow to ponds, their mirrors. Blossoms (and voices) scatter in stillness. “My letter arrived the day after she died,” says my mother or her former friend. “If it hadn’t of been . . .” her voice trails off. 302 �So he was always owing money for books “One, one, one, three ones.” Gensei, I understand perfectly. I don’t exactly “pull” my short hair, but scratching it puts me at ease. I too have a Chinese bowl which (go figure) hasn’t broken. I bet you the abbess in the privacy of her room . . . 303 �Tempestuous wind and warm moonlight make for a delicious evening Rain has washed the hill. A few drops cling to the blue porch rail. Peach petals cram the buttery mud. Trees are shadows, fleshy, lugubrious, tangles of grief tossed by the sky. A sparrow sings. First one, then a miasma of song. 304 �Peeps, the wisps of light through the burgeoning oak Cheep, cheep, chirp. A robin through the meadow fog. Near the roadside, small red butterflies. Away from her flock, a mother bobolink straggles over the weeds. Unseen, unheard, the old man’s shadow. 305 �“Poor thing,” I think. “It’s young and out of its element.” Plums. Ripe plums. (It’s my neighbor’s tree.) The ones on my side bruise as they land on the cement. I pick them up anyway, watch his perfect ones rot. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t eat them. 306 �The flowers of flowering plants that coevolved with insects are beautiful and sweet-scented for THEM My fuchsia died. I replaced it with a hoya, attracted by its awkward, nay unwieldy, barren stems. Yet I pity the hummingbird who nectared on the fuchsia’s blossoms. Everyday it checks to see if they’re back. 307 �“Snow blood” they call it. The grass bleeds Deep and still, the glowworm glows beeping hushed light. A big fish dives, surfaces, dives again (on the lookout). It’s late. Ripplets plash drowsily. Corridors of spiders do not suffer. 308 �Nabokov agrees I hate music. There, I’ve said it. The older I get, the more distasteful it seems. Its rhythm, vibration, clutter, noise, aesthetic, indeed provenance. I want my own. 309 �At dusk cicadas cry on and on Green geese have gone to bed. Nothing stirs beside these blackwatched waters. I linger. Search for a memory. Nada. But a deft, effulgent nada. 310 �My red-lacquered brush depicts life A plethora of frogs, their purr through the jalousies. I’m out in the rain (or is that too strong a word for frail pale sun-warmed mist)? Crossing a little foot-bridge, dotted with browning petals, the long day (its remaining light) I’m finding I dread. 311 �Six times, each day, I hike the path down to the valley Boring flowers. Predictable petals in straight little rows. Your grammar-school colors lack depth. No pa-zazz. No perfume. But I can’t just dig you up. I weed you, water you, wait for you to die. 312 �“Do no harm,” the VEDAS say Pounding lights, blinking, blurring. The city’s ceaseless hum. Its churning force of exhaustion, after day, before sleep. Alone in my room, I sit near a window, curtains gaping wide. The deli’s neon “OPEN,” through the pane, on my cup. 313 �The best visitors are birds “If we kill them we will save our crop, our fruit, our wives” (the monk exaggerates). “Well we eat carrots . . .” Everyone is exhausted. An impatient monk pulls out a gun. Another puts hers away. A solitary cow chews the chocolate grass. 314 �Clear green shoots of sassafras Fruits and vegetables are growing back now that the fire has exhausted itself. Panicked birds have not returned. (We keep finding their dead bodies.) Brackish stumps by tonight’s full moon (its bloody vampiric drift). “Hey!”(I call) nibbling the flesh from a loquat’s plum black seeds. 315 �Your redbud, your sasangua, even your mums strike me as outrageous Brittle heat, noisy fan, cocoa air raspy. Socks, caked with dirt, no longer fresh. Kneeling in the stacks, transfixed by a saiin’s16 pain. My bony ankles throb somewhere before Princess Shikishi. 316 �On this rock face I draw three buddhas Jelly-clouds, smug aren’t you, festering over the shoreline? Pretty soon, like a Gothic mist, you’ll be too dark to see. I race around in my Dresden car trying to find my way. No one speaks English. I ask directions and they look blank. 317 �Once home, I sweep, dust, am flooded with practical thoughts The wheeze of sprinklers comes as a relief. Tall grass bends (each blade, its interior palette of color). Listless, I stay home. Slowly accomplish what I need. The best thing is to empty my drawers, throw everything away. 318 �Barefoot, sweetly my nomad White bones. Scuttling over them, green ocean beasts. Hurry hurry. Quickly before the terrorists’ sharp tongues. Banqueting on your children. They don’t even bother to clean up after themselves. At the water’s edge, panicky steps. 319 �Unlike leaves, sorrows won’t scatter Scraps of cloud teem (coalesce) at the gate of all this rubble. Five thousand bodies gone the white cloud’s way. Standing in my yard, the stench, futility, emptiness. I can’t make a poem of it. 320 �Look at that dog all dressed out in plum blossoms Beaten down by rain, catkins prostrate on the river-bank. Sheets of bark, jostled by wind, dangle from exhausted trees. A frog gloats by on a dead oak leaf. Alone with a case-knife, a jolt of fear courses through me. 321 �Rain drops, paddling anyway toward the perch bubbles Beds of clouds shimmy by the boardwalk. Hundreds before I bat an eye. This ship, how can I contend with its irrevocable destination. I part with you, and again I part with the gull-dotted ocean edge. 322 �When petals scatter, and both pear and cherry are swaying in the evening breeze, it is quite impossible to tell them apart Byzantian rain, old and colorful as dusk settles waning September. I follow the clouds, their jasmine-tinted shadows, already low in the east. Mats of rush cool, and thanks to the rain, the day tolerable (though I fluff my shirt like a fan). I’ve been sick. I’m feeling stronger this morning, but not that strong. 323 �Fanning your tail, beating the ground, as your brood, faintly peeping, disappear Half dozing on a hilltop, a thousand leaves adrift. Wild geese, bawdy clouds, red, black, what? Our argument, your voice, the blue jay your attorney. Even the soul-soothing fog horn sounds preposterous. 324 �“Please ma’am, how are the apple trees?” The old riverbed, do you recall its rock-strewn slopes, overgrown and slimy? No one but us raced up the hill beyond the chestnuts for a smoke. Boulders for pillows, take your pick. All revel in the bottomless sky. My lament to the birds who carry it to you on long autumn winds. 325 �Li-Heng’s “slaves” 17 Postman, you’re a doll. These rare sweets light up the whole room. But I’m so sorry. I imagine they were heavy to carry. My wife, though grateful, neglected the proper thanks. I am ashamed. Life is difficult enough without inventing more trouble. 326 �Poet, painter – why limit yourself? Goat, rabbit, hen. I prop my pillow by a breezy window. A noisy barnyard has its novelties. Potatoes, corn, farmhands with plaid caps. They shoot a boar. Everyone celebrates. 327 �Visiting the ōi mansion a year after her death Below the eaves, fresh ferns and day-lilies. A kickball game underway in back. From inside the house, tinkling bells, striking gong. Brushwood gate, running stream, there as before. 328 �Clover field, though thinly clad, flushed The sky is blank. No color, no clouds. Just static. Schoolgirls comb the white San Francisco fog. In my youth I too scoured the city’s seven hills. Now, a decade’s clock crawls like a turtle. 329 �“Two, two is for the crest of two linked petals” I stoke up a fire, admire my yard. How many more blossoms this year than last! Gnarly branches, once mere twigs, thick, adult, graceful. “People are wearing shorts,” she says. “Unseasonal heat, though they say it may change soon.” “Huh,” she says in answer to my question. A soft “huh,” not really an interested “huh.” 330 �Darkness, in the elms first The little restaurant where we first ate noodles, boarded up, dark. You said my dish looked nourishing. I will never forget your concern. Wind blows a graying leaf across the fresh graffiti, through the stormy streets under my torn umbrella – so many years! 331 �Like a kid, the weather, restive, pushy Smell of tar, detours, rubble-creviced flats, I no longer even think of leaving you. On a municipal park bench beneath a young, wire-trellised tree, a yellow leaf flutters by and yes, I say shamelessly. 332 �Under moist chestnut leaves, white grubs stretch Sobered by the ceaseless rain, I inspect my chocolate ivy. Growth, once charmingly new, now leggy, top-heavy. I search for clippers. “I could cut it in half,” I think, before noticing, at its tip, a hairy, ever-so-fine, silken thread. 333 �She stands her ground, froglike On mornings when it’s dark, what? What is it that makes me rebel? It’s wild outside. (I’m terrified. People do crazy thing in wild weather.) My mother reports that my father is sick. He refuses to tell her more. I balk. She says, “Well dear, you must not know me very well.” 334 �“Sheer by my sleeve falls the cry of a wild goose” Haze like a skin, permanent, scarred, claims the broken atmosphere. One bony branch pokes through a colorless breeze. A temple bell from somewhere far off, could it be for your memory? I feel for the children – your mangled body, suddenly, in the river’s way. 335 �In Java, it is said, the tiger’s hearing is so acute that hunters must keep their nose hairs cut lest the tiger hear their breath whistle through their nostrils Autumn is arrogant, fierce, “in your face” (as young people say). I hear the wind before feeling its chill. (Under my quilt I lie, listening.) The pond, dark before, is now a glorious water-silk blue. In the quiet hours before dawn, a pair of wood ducks paddle across. 336 �Reeds begin to bow (seem disturbed) as we float by Sky Paris blue, on-the-move blue, not deep summer blue, cobalt winter blue just arising on the unseen firmament. Haloed by a ring of mud, a horsefly poised on the burgeoning oak, is between places, restless, not settling in for the long haul. 337 �Twice, thrice, the caw of a crow Silky swirls, the mud flats eerie. A waterbird glides tardily through the black backlit sky. Playing bridge in a shabby village parlor, listening closely to the clatter of the cards, a recluse mind appears of itself, returns of itself . . . 338 �Longing’s raw distances “I’m sick of the cold,” says the blond woman after one day of cold weather. I don’t know what to say. (I secretly relish the gorgeous snow on my drab, unkempt yard.) Raising the blinds I gaze at the sky, its blossom-streamers of white. Fine as rice, buffeted in a gusty wind, parting the shoreline reeds. 339 �Sitting happiness in A nose-ring she asks. (Really she is stating.) Would it be a pretty thing? (She can’t conceal her joy.) “Yes,” I pause, “I think, on your face . . .” I watch the eyes of her friend. 340 �“Don’t rush,” he admonishes and my heart sinks with this truth That butterfly is cold. It flaps its wings but doesn’t go anywhere. The snow has stopped. The roads are clearing though they’re still slick with scattered patches of ice. Deep beats, solid, earthy, pulling (gripping) the water’s cottony edge. “The river wants to be heard before it is contaminated.” 341 �But something about her – I can’t keep my eyes off A frowsy day. Mist bloats the rocky swamp. Bunkered in a hill, a few cabins, a small chalet, their fine-grained, skinlike mud. At night, the temperature dives. Winds frenzily slash the rain. I (too) hover in my room, after our fight, shut down, empty. 342 �One strand of long river Rounding the bend, the familiar daily bend rounding the little lake. Today the sky is dark. Tall grass prefigures winter, blowing wildly. Fickle rain (snow inevitable) though the ducks seem calm. A mower climbs the hill, finishing early. 343 �Falling-Petals Rock Time in one breath stops time, a breath breathed by the three-tiered hill. The soldiers of Shilla certainly lose out. Ravaging the town, they’ll have to take the peasant girls. May the brats they produce one day rape their wives. 344 �But the little house is warm enough House of pebble, doll of clay, the cicada’s sad, rocking drone. The sweetness of those years as I lay listening to the wind. A tinger’s claw rips down a tree preparing for a kill. (I dream.) Luminous flakes, like Christmas spirits, freeze the song of birds. 345 �Buddha’s eight features Sloppy braids, leggings clumsy, pigtails I detest. Pinafore grimy, uglier than a beady-eyed crocodile. You too, Su, boyish hair knotted, forget that now it’s gray. We dream, but spirits don’t bruise, despite a careless carriage driver. 346 �I apologize to the fox, the rabbit, even the wild weed “Someone past her mature years,” describes Saikō, self-derisively, no longer fit to “await the moon in the west room.” Opening blue book-binders is, I guess, her “old-age” speed. Capricious, undirected, scuttling over carnage dragged by the moon from its depths. Hey. I’ve finally arrived at the point where I can open blue book-binders! 347 �Winter sun, too weak to heat the chilly rock The “silk-socks” of the narcissus or cold of the flowering plum, in my moon tonight, what would I want with either? My husband is a brute. The people I tell don’t understand. Demure, forget it. Though effective, its power is too indirect. 348 �Watching it feed its mother Thin alright. But hairy and sickly. “Who would be interested in my fuzzy cunt?” I complain. Spring passes. Leaves turn red. Another Christmas to shuffle around in the empty yard. 349 �Along with the storm, a flock of snow birds Bitter cold. Of course we expected it. I rock in my rocker, listen to my child prattle to herself. Someone has given her a set of clamshells polished and painted with scenes. Their chinking clicks, beside those of the house as the sun warms it. 350 �White ice turns to dark ice – the color of water Snow falls in a thick, day-long shroud. Children scoop it up, build a raft of Pinocchio-nosed men. I straighten my daughter’s kicked-off bedding. Arrange my New Year’s gifts. My child has developed an extremely sharp eye for her half-shells’ subtle patterns, all so similar, yet precisely matched to one – and only one – other. 351 �I can’t stop myself from reaching over and pulling the sleeve away from her beautiful face Night has fallen. The wind is strong and I walk by a brittle moon. In the steepness of the valley, rapids pound like thunder. I lide my hands into my huge Tibetan parka. “Their mountains are snowy,” the store proprietor had said. A desolate spot, my garden, where flurries blast the frost-laced trees. 352 �Lilies on the old lacquer tray Caw caw caw. I’m awakened from a messy sleep. Pillow-marks deep, I look like a mean old woman. From my window a nebulous shadow, scraping, pushing, what does it want? Could it be my parakeet that flew away? 353 �“Round, round the precious blossom cliff” The proprietress gladly comments on the sweater she thinks prettiest. I watch her aging face, wonder what goes through her mind. With the howling wind, the shop is empty. Only me, constrained, uncertain. 354 �Stubby grass, green alright Still trying to charm, though the edge is off. From tiredness or disillusionment, not sure. The little bit that’s left, awkward in one with peppery hair. Russian princess, not really. 355 �May breeze and good weather settle in soon No peaks tumble down to sea. No clouds converge as I look back. The paint chips. The carpets are dirty. The children may be well-dressed, but they’re noisy as hell. 356 �A vegetarian now Why ask about the sea-gulls? You don’t actually believe they’re wary of you. You, an old man living in the wilds. Your greens and boiled millet signify the very position you want. Filthy old birds, what do they have to do with it? 357 �I see in my journal I was looking forward to snow Pinnacles in clusters, clefted with knobs. Stalactites hang to the ground. In one of these cubicles an exorcist prays. Each gorge has a peddler. (He drinks with the boatmen who work the river.) This bitter cold night, stuffed, soused, the old man’s hilarity. 358 �And we came home a drenched confusion of wild laughter Cold rain slaps the tired cypress. Children romp, scramble up their homemade hill. Big boulders are heaped about. Rapids collect where a jumble of them block the current. Someone keeps calling our dog Snowball, a name that sticks – nevermind that his fur is brown. 359 �Frost deep, roof tiles brittle The pinking shears I bought seem dull or perhaps it’s my hand, dull with age (or idleness). Unlike the branch, its departing scent as the day ends. Soft mud in the swallow’s beak, crows instead of warblers in my willow. Rain comes, then snow, elegant in the declining sun. 360 �A thousand wings, their shadow The temperate blend of creek, hot-spring waters, heat. An internal pressure altered but unrelieved by winter cold. Intense quiet, its affluence full. It did snow while I was at father’s, but it only depressed me. 361 �Sweet Moses, the bulrush Before dawn, long before dawn. Early early morning. By virtue of this joy one is set apart from others. Yesterday, in an accident, your dear sister, dead. Late snow. Mudslides. I get goose bumps. 362 �A dog out to pee, shakes its fur of water, vigorously, but sheepish, as if forced into behavior beneath its dignity We clatter out at dawn. Scuff scuff. (The monks hurry.) The tenken pounds, which I hear as a great drum. An old man of seventy, sickle at his waist. When he dreams long dreams, what do you think they’re about? “Tick tick tick . . . it’s my own quiet – the sleeve,” he said. 363 �Sunset: one in the river, one in the sky Young and easy, the pairing now makes sense. I’m old, not at all “easy.” I could even say I’m “difficult,” more so with the passing years. I snap at stupidity, refuse to be delayed. If you’re late, too bad. No excuse is good enough to justify inconveniencing me. 364 �My fichus, for example, now shrouded in crumpled leaves All creatures hushed. Water rockets toward earth. I’m terrified of its shameless maw. Forced in its path, mangled by boulders. Dead dead dead. Feathers and foam bubble toward the river-mouth. 365 �Please don’t sweep the autumn leaves that linger around the well “Wedgewood.” Yes! Finally, after hours of struggle. Deeper, deeper, excavating associations, yet the word itself escapes. Growing old, I marvel at athe irrelevancies that flood my mind. Su, I am charmed. Your “three delights”18 move me to tears. 366 �Porridge done, fire out My home is made of bristle. Blood pumps, yes. Already crusty, my eyes see little. My gate creaks. My parakeet’s cage rattles in the wind. And you. Are you dead yet? 367 �Flower bells just after sunset From a snowdrift, sharp white light. Alligators, porpoises snap and vanish. In the dead of quiet, a blue and white current Fizzles . . . evaporates . . . 368 �A long and firm sweet flag comes from yesterday’s festivities Snow hisses down. My fire sputters. “Jonathan died last May. He was twenty-four,” you say. A shower of sleet bashes against the glass. A green moon slowly rises. Caw caw caw. One black crow dominates the northern river. 369 �Notes 1. “. . . the paradise which the poet T’ao Yuan-ming (365–427) described in his ‘Record of the Peach Flower Spring,’ an isolated valley inhabited by happy peasants and approached through a peach forest in Wu-ling, which a fisherman stumbled upon once but could never find again.” Su Tung-P’o, p. 111 2. According to Ayurvedic medicine, a dosha, literally “fault” or “mistake,” is one of the three forces [Vata, Pita, Kapha] that bind the Five Great Elements to living flesh. 3. “Snow” and “haze” are metaphors for cherry blossoms. 4. One mou = one sixth of an acre. 5. “Nam Yi [1441–1468] was a brilliant military leader, and he became the minister of national defense when he was only twenty-six. Those who were envious of his success conspired to use this poem to accuse him of harboring treasonous thoughts, and he was executed by royal order.” The Moonlit Pond, p. 51. The rocks of Mount Paektu will whet my sword; My horse will drink up Tuman River. If a man of twenty is unable to bring peace to his land. Who in later ages will call him a true-born man? 6. In Chinese mythology, an agricultural deity representing the virtues of fire. Also the deity of summer. 7. “According to the tale in the Sou-shen hou-chi, a man of Chin times was traveling along the road at nightfall when he saw a new-built grass-roofed hut by the roadside, with a woman gazing at him as he passed. He asked her for a night’s lodging, which she granted. During the night he heard a young boy outside, calling and saying, ‘A-hsiang, the Governor says to haul out your thunder cart!’ The woman excused herself and went out, and later that night there was heavy thunder and rain. Next morning when the man looked at the place where he had spent the night, he saw only a new grave. Selected Poems of Su Tung-p’o, p. 61. 370 �8. Children love Ryōkan and recognized his thin, lanky frame from afar. Ryōkan’s friend, the poet Yamada Tokō, noted how seeing him, all the children would yell this verse. 9. In Chinese poetry, bamboo is often compared to the dragon. l0. Shallow snow (less than one inch) that does not drive off robins. 11. Bu means “healing.” 12. A Confucian dictum has it: “While not married yet a woman must obey her father; once married she must obey her husband; and, after her husband dies, she must obey her son.” 13. “Wind and moon” is a metaphor for art and poetry. 14. Another name for the plum tree as well as a metaphor for a beautiful woman. 15. A painting technique Saikō occasionally used to paint bamboo. 16. “Vestal Virgin” or “High Priestess.” 17. “Li-Heng of the kingdom of Wu (early third century A.D.) left his heirs an orchard of a thousand orange trees, explaining in his will that they were ‘a thousand wooden slaves’ that would earn for his descendants a comfortable living.” Su Tung-p’o, p. 85. 18. Morning hair-combing, afternoon window-dozing and bedtime feet-soaking. Works cited The Moonlit Pond: Korean Classical Poems in Chinese. Translated and introduced by Sung-Il Lee. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1998. Selected Poems of Su Tung-p’o. Translated by Burton Watson. Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1994. Su Tung-p’o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet. Translated and with an Introduction by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965. 371 �This printing of Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms was designed and set into type by Linda Davis at Star Type, Berkeley, using Poliphilus and Blado. Poliphilus was copied using a roman font cut in Venice in 1499 by Francesco Griffo. The italic font Blado is based on a font designed by Ludovio degli Arrighi about 1526. The type was digitized by the Monotype Corporation type foundry. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Look at that dog all dressed out in plum blossoms Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2002 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 972611509 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_017 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Eating Little Fishes Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms Extent The size or duration of the resource. 384 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/c20b5b82ce05f2c14de2f61bbab74909.pdf 215068f140544633cec633634076de8c PDF Text Text Lines �The Lifeof a Laysa11All,atmss Gail Sher �coI1tent6 lord of the air 1 monarch of the ocean skies 18 ruler of the sun 31 rider on the wind 40 �lord of the air 1 �>> "the goonies are here!" "the goonies have come back!" squawking, squabbling their drowsy hum from the bush 2 �on lime··green flats little water-spout tracks 3 �the pelagic bird stops through roaring troughs her hulking shadow 4 �dusting clouds slender waves tacking through the spindrift 5 �>> two nests too close their killingstare 6 �settling on the egg talking to the egg shhhh ... listen ... 7 �pssstt ... the babe turns slowly ... slowly ... crack! 8 �matted fuzz, spiky fluff kicking away the blunt shell end 9 �>> a newborn sleeps, a father stirs on the atoll's floor gossamer prints 10 �open bill on open bill crosswise 11 �coaxing its face forward pointing, peeping scooping its tail toward his chick-pouch 12 �folding wings straightening feathers his long gaze at the sky 13 �>> on flight-stiff legs her beeline toward the fledgling 14 �gulping, guzzling wiping its beak in the sand 15 �chick pauses to swallow dangling from its mouth mucousy strings of goo 16 �the still-small bird away from its nest its expression seeing father 17 �monarch of the ocean 6kie6 18 �>> silent tide, silent sea crest to crest her graceful arc 19 �rocketing higher gliding right up the wind shrinking to a pinpoint 20 �her flight line dips now vast, now toward starlit moonless water 21 �surfing the air its rushing edge the long bones of her wings 22 �>> tropical Kuroshio, frigid Oyashio hush! do you hear the fishing grounds'? 23 �birds scatter, birds drown catching squid in a vicious typhoon 24 �one breaker's spray the spume of the next cold northwest blast 25 �after dark down as the ocean swells & forward up & away like a storm-driven snowflake 26 �>> head tucked, feathers flat on the sea's slick skin a watertight bird 27 �look! loligos! small! alive! fresh! 28 �one dying saury one dead squid in the dusk's sloe light impaling them on her bill 29 �following a breeze its wafting scent of pup-filled sharks 30 �ruler of the sun 31 �>> heels rooted, toes raised in the undulating air a youngster pants 32 �hugging the trees' broad strips of shade hundreds face away from the glare 33 �one thin reed one still fowl in its sun-spotted shadow 34 �neither stirring nor breathing hauled to the incinerator 35 �>> circling oops! the lagoon's greenish water 36 �breast to ground reeling forward a little too fast 37 �churling birds, whirling sand the grizzled sea a white-capped chop 38 �over aerofoil wings - its gentle lift savoring the glow in the bow waves 39 �rider on the wind 40 �>> "h ey.I" but the youth quickly departs 41 �dive-bombing,blanketinghim withdroppings "you can't come here!" "you can't come here!" 42 �a truck driver honks climbs down from his cab the juvenile's gawky stare 43 �shady lawn skidding rear the smashed-bird's face 44 �>> he, still she notices will she stay? 45 �drawing himself up he remains rooted she tosses a twig aside 46 �"moo" clacks the bird croaking, whistling shaking his feathers into place 47 �regaining her balance settling her wings as they shriek, fight, stumble over one another 48 �>> erect, a skyward victory scream after a nap in the rare spring sun 49 �throwing grass he bows to the ground "eh ... eh eh ... eh" he murmurs 50 �she sits he sits nearby gently nibbling her neck feathers 51 �caressing his bill she raises one wing the male's rapt look 52 �>> two birds touch, lower to the ground through nubile limbs their dappled bodies 53 �she watches quietly the tip of her beak on his expanded breast 54 �water ebbs surges on the sand the rising moon's flickering shadows 55 �morning sun in its chiseled lace turtle's mottled shell 56 �Published by Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, #435 Emeryville CA 94608 © 2002 Gail Sher www.gailsher.com � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Lines : the life of a Laysan albatross Subject The topic of the resource Albatrosses -- Poetry Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2002 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_016 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. lord of the air monarch of the ocean skies ruler of the sun rider of the wind Extent The size or duration of the resource. 60 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/e8161e756f21ddf937579fa4522c6f2e.pdf 2385b6bc7b8dbdf275d4544ae1220a97 PDF Text Text LIKE A CRANE AT NIGHT �A day at Kushiro Marsh, nesting ground for Japanese Cranes on the northern island of Hokkaido. poems by Gail Sher ��DAYBREAK daybreak­ vapor rising over just-stirring birds �2 silence but for buntings twittering in the sedge �3 notes of a reed-warbler riddle this icy morning �4 male on nest his cry in the rising meltwater �5 SUNRISE sunriseswelling in the marsh water new grass �6 April thaw­ twigs in ice cover the bud �7 straggling through the cloven ice yellow floweret �8 dead stalks of kitayoshi conceal the nest from the gunman kitayoshi = "reedsof the north" �9 MORNING spring morning a speckled egg on the grassy hummock �10 snowflakes dust the new-born chick From Decemberto April, Kushiro Marsh is almost completelyfrozen over, thus snow is still presentat springtime. �11 righting itself shuddering - gently shaking its wings �12 staring at the second egg tawny chickstill �13 NOONTIDE broad-winged bird silhouette swaying in the noontide �14 wind-driven snow and you-oh white bird bouncing, leaping treading air in the squall �15 white bird, blue sky wingspan arched gilded by the sunlight �16 swift upbeat of wings followed by slow fea the ring of the air �17 SINGING her solo pierces the winter sky �18 a full-throated call­ arching, hoisting his wings toward the trespasser �19 necks cross puffs condense in the chilly air �20 Crook, Crook! he cries then ceases abruptly when it's over �21 FEEDING thick green duckweed a yearling dives under to feed �22 a fledgling drinks ... insects float on the stagnant swamp �23 minnow in its beak young crane stops in the rippling bog �24 a wriggling fish tossing it catching it further down the bill The small eel-like dojo, a kind of loach or mud.fish,is the cranes favorite treat in spring and summer. �25 PREYING passing a cow four cranes - graze the summer pasture �26 craning its neck scamming the bird red fox motionless �27 dashing through a stand of spruce beneath the airborne flock �28 shooing the buzzard away from her chick in a whirl of snow �29 DUSK duskcreeping fog darkens the estuary �30 shroud of fog ... mallards bob among the spongy islands �31 the sun sets shadows flutter under hovering wings �32 dips below the horizon ripples of pink in its wake �33 TWILIGHT twilight­ back to roost in the silver birch �34 aV of shrubs a clump alights among �35 gliding shuddering wing-tip stunned by the wire �36 moonrisea silhouette drifts along the inlet �37 MOONLIGHT no-necked crane plumage folded one leg lifted off the sandbar �raising it 38 shaking it then tucking it in its breast �39 wading in the pool long black legs - and more long black legs �40 sable throat vermilion crown glowing in the moonlight �Each book is wrapped in paper made from kozo, the bast fiber (inner bark) of the mulberry tree. The paper is red with black, white and gold ties. The four colors together are the traditional colors associated with thejapanese Crane. �Publishedby Night Crane Press, c/o Gail Sher,700 Heinz Avenue, Suite 310, Berkeley,CA 94710 © 1996 Gail Sher Designand illustration by Lory Poulson Wrappingmotif developedwith Elica'sPaper,Berkeley The author wishes to acknowledgeauthor DorothyBritton and photographerTsuneoHayashida, whose elegantbook, The Japanese Crane: Bird of Happiness (publishedby KodanshaInternational,New York, 1993), informed and inspired these poems. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Like a crane at night : a day at Kushiro Marsh, next ground for Japanese cranes on the northern island of Hokkaido : poems Subject The topic of the resource Cranes (Birds) -- Poetry Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 1996 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_015 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 45 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/25e17be83cc2817dfb55ae77ab8b4f2a.pdf e752192c9b9523b4c9babb1079979b8b PDF Text Text Hundred-Stanza Renga by Gail Sher and Andrew Schelling [Published in Simply Haiku, Autumn 2010] (1) summer A whole year’s passed— he fetches down the elk skull, aspen leaves shaking (2) summer night: except for the occasional squawk of a korhaan . . . (3) autumn moon and a Moon of Yellow Willows breaks across bits of these tattered lives (4) autumn little knife-edges of snow luminous against the clear blue sky (5) autumn mid-September— and Wang Wei’s poem hides a haiku? pre-dawn buck’s cry says yes (6) misc. pass me the hoe! how many times do I have to ask? (7) winter �Sand Hill Cranes rise from the stubble field’s first snow— ice wrinkling the Platte (8) winter now I am thinking that immolation is wrong (9) travel pawprints, criss-cross trails, green tracks in the mud— I, too, take the Great Journey (10) travel the truth of its clothes in the cold hall, think of clothes (11) lamentations she thinks that had she become a nun something about coats light as soft as yellow foxes fur (12) love now her cloister’s a careless bedsheet across her thighs (13) love like a tree’s shadow in darkness, she says seated in her flesh watching young night creep behind the massif (14) love �dark ridge bristles with pine dark thighs fragrant of jasmine (15) spring flowers fondling the flower— light plump peas float in the loosening pod (16) spring her eyes are blank I feel no connection with her (17) spring rash blue petals a dukula cloth covers Radha’s deep lotus (18) autumn moon chestnut-moon: I smear the land a fierce bright lilac (19) autumn he eyes the mist-filled ravine longing for “home’s familiar moon” (stars) (20) autumn bubbles splurge, though they are slow bubbles sometimes empty white holes (21) autumn �cold constellations twist over Kullu even the plum wine’s sour (22) winter beware of mud piled and caked in little squares of mud maps (23) lamentations my ornaments bones of emptiness – I study them for clues to lost love (24) lamentations yet, practically speaking, what is her fan compared to the carp’s life (25) misc. he studies the formal stiff board, the fibers of silk and longs for wind-torn high granite (26) misc. today you are a brook, feeling brook energy, a monk thinks in his forest cell near Hua Hin (27) spring flowers a Full Wolf Moon the brittle snow but who recalls the dogtooth violet? (28) spring �which dawn did the fresh wind blow toward a knoll of fawns (29) spring love where in the dark grove, eyes, eyes, where the ivory instep, the petal-soft foot (30) love sun shines on my spine as I greet him through the window (31) love the river merchant’s wife— by the gate the thick mosses the unused hinges (32) love I read it as a book against war a hundred years what did we learn (33) misc. light falls on raw wood and softly falls on her as she passes into sky (34) travel she bows, mimicking the dancer because her ancestors are there too (35) autumn travel rises, tightens a scarf against the year’s �first snow, the angled trees strange skyline, smoldering clouds (36) autumn moon the noise of its blue resolves into stars (37) autumn twice gone moon song glint the poetry shelf’s one phase of the hunt (38) love her braid seeks shadows snowdrops, honeysuckle, or in summer, violets (39) love he’d give her sapphire, avalanche can’t crush it, but dwarf dogwood’s soft on her cheek (40) lamentations I’m thinking of wings rubbed with sky (41) lamentations sometimes it hurts to hear that no snowflake falls in the wrong place (42) miscellaneous where does a person with three kinds of defects �breathe out the master asks (43) miscellaneous or the sand lily – if you say change to a sea-bird where would it root (44) miscellaneous how a beaver floats under sky-words – before what in a bud sprouting on a sprig of grass (45) miscellaneous this was near Chama, a clump of blue juniper where the clicking bones sang don’t fear (46) miscellaneous that wild red impassible gully rushed with such violence (47) travel I thought of sea-beds thought of tilting red sandstone plates the drift of continents (48) travel a relaxed tousled gamine emerges from last year’s prim and simple one (49) love easy to be near her, but now I can’t shake the Taoist �emblem inked on her nape-line (50) love I shiver through a shallow sleep on this night of extreme cold (51) love her glowing bare shoulders burn me indecipherably— moon, crater, remorse (52) religion as if you are light and as you approach you are dimmer light (53) religion and in that dim aura coils of smoke, gray, twisted— to you I offer a handful of water (54) autumn moon an old owl coos stirring the girl whose face looks out (55) autumn steep rib of canyon, view of Denver ne bear fattens on what— crabapples? (56) autumn the combination of sere, barren wood ladened with richly colored fruits being starkly beautiful �(57) travel being, in the Chinese cycle metal, when the blues enter our heart, …on a northbound train (58) love was it his tooth in her lighted body beckoning him (59) love one brittle shard in his sheets a bone fragment left by the dream (60) spring flower the crocus breaks as parts of the sky that are hers (61) spring all those abstract skirts of rain sweeping the mesa at Hopi (62) spring dogs chew light they lay it at her feet (63) travel she has seen marvels none scared her more than the gods of the Punjab Hills �(64) lamentations movement being like a shell or castanet like the days and lives of her horses (65) autumn moon only the crickets chirr’d when the word brindled sank through Eldorado Gap (66)autumn the crocus breaks as parts of the sky that are hers (67) autumn he studies the clouds the first hard snow pellets sting what has he lost (68) lamentations a flower is soft and the pain of soft presses against the hill (69) lamentations just as I’d befriended the Holocene, angry constellations burnt the night sky (70) miscellaneous when you appear the interior land shifts making sounds like stones �(71) spring flower Tim Hogan showed me the billion year jump, stone to stone, kinnikinnik bells (72) spring he regrets that he’s disturbed their nap under the peony blossoms (73) spring useless, useless, a late frost throws them to the winds all the words of Hamlet (74) travel an instinct for home in a carrier-pigeon has no presence in what will happen then (75) travel or the myna stole the peacock’s feet— that’s what I heard in the Kangra (76) travel the nipple of the bird its sound in the dark grass (77) love tabla ektar tambur bent the way we make love one string one insect �(78) love and the fire-pink, its ontogeny, how it came to be, as you say, erupted (79) love caribou horns cast their moss the moon’s lost its link, dream dream cries the blackbird (80) miscellaneous the impression I get is of an image being destinies (81) autumn moon now redshaft flickers left wings needle towards leaf-fall-moon (82) autumn travel a distant reddish-brown mountain looks like a flying dragon (83) autumn days I shuffle the Taoist bird script symbols, at night dream of baseball (84) travel and love he hears cars as air containing pleasure towards which he has a certain relationship (85) love �each time they thought their thirst sated (redwoods, bay laurel) old desire again (86)winter so my image of sky flips white alternately occluded and revealed (87) winter while by night crackly glitter over shagged lodgepoles we glimpse the Hunter’s Belt (88) (miscellaneous) a tulip on the sill for a minute I forget (89) miscellaneous lost in the raga’s ascending notes the mood the blue grove sets (90) miscellaneous its non-benevolence equitable to some hidden karmic debt (91) autumn there’s sinew there’s a dark gust tossing the letter thunder yellow willows guilt (92) autumn moon �to exfoliate the water the skin of night growing clear (93) autumn water plants words omens of animals in céénkoo’ I keep antler dreams in the pouch (94) miscellaneous but I get tired like the naga, Elapatra (95) spring flower when I doze pasque flowers, prairie smoke then from Swift Turtle a star falls (96) spring bluebells light a field the scent of ones grown thin and tall (97) spring religion others cluster by the bridge where I burn juniper spring runoff take these words (98) spring religion Negro sound is pale wheeling down into the skies (99) miscellaneous �curved night dome a rock-cut Mary surveys the valley high up the Great Bear (100) miscellaneous having blossoming of light, crop of morning light, forks of light cross the horizon of seeing then _______________________________________ . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hundred-stanza renga Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Schelling, Andrew Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_013 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 15 p. Is Referenced By A related resource that references, cites, or otherwise points to the described resource. Published in Simply Haiku, Autumn 2010 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherMagazine SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/cd60174c2ace3eec2e2b9692aca5c627.pdf 7ef835e94985ba9fcd10ed24545644f9 PDF Text Text FPO PLACE BARCODE HERE night crane press night crane press Gail Sher Gail Sher lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area as a writer, teacher and counselor. She has published over thirty books of poetry, six book-length haiku sequences, three books on writing as a practice, and a book on breadmaking based on her years of experience at the San Francisco Zen Center’s bakery. Her poetry has appeared in over forty literary journals, and her haiku have won awards both in the United States and Japan. For more information and to read her poetry online go to gailsher.com. Te Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries in the annals of haiku, Gail Sher’s Te Haiku Masters is unique. Tere exist many volumes on how to write or teach haiku. Dozens of fne translations of Japanese poets can be had in English. Until now, though, nobody has thought to write an original book on the four master poets—a book that recounts their biographies in the rhythmic interplay of prose and verse known as haibun. Gail Sher’s diary-like chapters follow the arduous search of each poet, her own poems responding to their hard-won spiritual and poetic insights. When I link those two terms—poetic and spiritual—it is a move all four poets would understand in a fash. Haiku—the best of it— conveys a fash of satori, and this is its enduring Zen legacy. andrew schelling Naropa University Te Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries Gail Sher �Te Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries �also by gail sher prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 poetry Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 COPS • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �Te Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries Gail Sher night crane press 2008 �Copyright 2008, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 Second Printing 2018 No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978-0-9794721-3-8 �For Brendan ��Contents Preface by Andrew Schelling ix Basho: Epoch of Dusk 1 Get on a Sleigh: Buson’s Heart Song 35 Issa Issa 79 Shiki: Epitaph of a Flower 99 ��Preface In the sixty-odd years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the poetic form known as haiku has moved from the wards and precincts of Japan’s old cities to circle our planet. What was once a specifcally Japanese verse practice, rising to extraordinary popularity during the feudal Edo Period (1615-1868), is now the most widely practiced form of poetry in North America, Europe, and possibly worldwide. Te scholar Haruo Shirane calls it Japan’s most successful export. Schoolchildren in Colorado or Oklahoma who have never tasted sashimi may be seasoned composers of haiku. Tey can do it in traditional seventeen-syllable form, as well as the more contemporary free-style version, which Jack Kerouac announced: POP-American (non-Japanese) Haikus, short three-line poems or ‘pomes’ rhyming or nonrhyming delineating ‘little Samadhis’ if possible, usually of a Buddhist connotation, aiming towards enlightenment. Haiku and its related writing forms—which include linked verse renga and the prose-and-poem hybrid called haibun—are looked on with suspicion by Western gatekeepers of literature. Poets, though, have used them to see the natural world sharply, refresh our language, and to redirect our focus: “aiming towards enlightenment” might be a whole new way of writing in the Occident. Gary Snyder (who received Japan’s Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Grand Prize in 2004) was asked in Te Bloomsbury Review to comment on what inroads haiku has made into Western culture. ix �I think it’s on its way, but I wouldn’t say it’s anywhere near yet. Tis doesn’t translate into consciousness and respect for [haiku] in the English department, or in the comparative literature department, or in Te New York Review of Books, where they want to see more irony and intellect. Te postmodern mental habit is anti-simplicity, among other things. Surely there are those who squint at haiku as a holdover from the American sixties, which along with Zen, the search for a tranquil simple life, an ecology ethic, and the efort to limit petroleum intake, will vanish. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Poets of distinction—including Nobel Prize recipient Octavio Paz, Yves Bonnefoy in France, and Sweden’s Tomas Transtromer—use the form prolifcally and unapologetically. Hundreds of North American poets have pulled of a near-revolution with the form (Kerouac called it the rucksack revolution). In fact haiku has been written in the New World since Mexican poet José Juan Tablada published a book of his own in 1911. And Japanese-language haiku clubs, ginsha, were founded in San Francisco, Fresno, and Stockton, in the frst quarter of the twentieth century. Japan considers four poets the masters of the craf. So diferent are they from each other, you might imagine they watch over haiku, like guardians of the Four Directions at some rustic wooden temple. Each introduced a new sensibility to the practice. Tese nearly legendary Japanese poets are the “Four Masters” of Gail Sher’s book: Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), Yosa Buson (1716-1784), Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826), and Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). With Shiki haiku advances to the opening of the twentieth century. In fact he edges so near to our own world that poems of his are included in a recent anthology of haiku on baseball. I fnd it worth noting that Shiki was also the frst poet to use the modern term “haiku” for the short seventeen-syllable poem, of which x �millions get written every year in Japan alone. His baseball haikus do just what haiku’s always done, taking extraordinary interest in ordinary, commonplace things. “Plainness and oddness are the bones,” as Basho said of haiku. In feudal Japan haiku helped poetry break free from the old aristocratic scene, so onion farmers and fshermen, not just court poets could write it. In the States it does just fne—as Snyder noted—outside the English department. In the annals of haiku, Gail Sher’s Te Haiku Masters is unique. Tere exist many volumes on how to write or teach haiku. Dozens of fne translations of Japanese poets can be had in English. Until now, though, nobody has thought to write an original book on the four master poets—a book that recounts their biographies (or auto-biographies) in the rhythmic interplay of prose and verse known as haibun. Gail’s diary-like chapters follow the arduous search of each poet, her own poems responding to their hard-won spiritual and poetic insights. When I link those two terms—poetic and spiritual—it is a move all four poets would understand in a fash. Haiku—the best of it—conveys a fash of satori, and this is its enduring Zen legacy. Te old masters saw simplicity and poverty as central to the haiku search. “Eat vegetable soup rather than duck stew,” Basho told his students. I do not mean to dismiss or romanticize Issa’s sufering. He saw each of his infant children die, as well as their mothers. Poverty surely had something to do with it. Shiki, a generation later, went through crippling years of pain, a victim of spinal tuberculosis, frequently bedridden, wracked with fever, and confned in his dying years to a sickroom. Only Buson lived a full-length span by modern standards, and he was notably poor until achieving a bit of success as a painter in his old age. What I mean is none of them wavered in their conviction that this pursuit— of one of the world’s briefest yet richest poetry forms—was the only life worth living. xi �come to my hut and hear the cry of the bagworm Basho Haiku was these men’s way of tracking life into its deepest lair. Gail Sher’s instinct is to write about the four Japanese haiku poets in a way that feels deliberate as their lives and writings. Her book comes from years of immersion in their work. Not incidentally, Gail took Buddhist vows and for some years wore robes at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, just as Basho and Buson wore robes. But where does one fnd the tenderness Issa or Shiki turned into companionship with spiders or peonies? Maybe the source is a life dedicated to ahimsa (Sanskrit: non-injury), which is not just fancy Buddhist teaching or monkish precept, but simple bedrock decency. Cause as little harm as possible. If you turn ahimsa the other direction and see it from a point that doesn’t refer to yourself, it means giving careful, unobtrusive attention to living creatures—a practice that radiates from the lives of these masters. I fnd something irreducible in Issa’s comment on a walk with his uncle: “Tree years of study seem worthless compared to this conversation.” So this book belongs with your rucksack, walking staf, and old stalwart boots. A companion on the journey. Part of the delight is to hear Gail’s haiku echo against those of the old masters, and to realize she’s inviting you to compose your own. “Come to my hut / and hear the cry / of the bagworm.” How do you answer? Basho: “Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old masters. Seek what they sought.” Andrew Schelling Fourth of July Valley, Colorado September 2007 xii �BASHO: EPOCH OF DUSK ��Te Way of Elegance I am a poet. As a dropout from bushido society, I reject the vulgar values of the merchant class. Stitched together by a single thread of art, literature provides an alternative. I call it fuga-no-michi, the “Way of Elegance.” atop a clothesline pole one black crow— in the day’s snowy silence 3 �Onomatopoeia, Rhyme, Slant Rhyme = My Favorite Tools the old pond a frog jumps in— the sound of water furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto It is spring. I am at my riverside hut in the north of Edo. Trough the sof patter of rain comes the throaty cooing of doves. Ten the sound of a frog leaping into water. For me a frog is a dear little creature. By focusing on its leap (rather than croak), the poem—its warm, slow-moving day aspect—perfectly matches the tranquility ripening in me. Kikaku responds with this wakiku: “a spider’s nest / hanging on young reeds.” Might it normalize a bit what some call my “perspective by incongruity?” hi, hi . . . yo, yo . . . o frog, your old old voice 4 �Makura Kotaba: Pillow Word: Its Double Entendre a fash of lightning; through the darkness goes the cry of a night heron inazuma ya yami no kata yuku go’i no koe Late in life, during a visit to my native village, Iga, I am lying, comfortably suspended in the magnetic silence of an oncoming autumn storm, when suddenly lightning fashes. Trough the darkness that returns, a night heron screams. A night heron not only has a terrifying voice but lustrous wings that glow in the dark. Te fash of lightning, plus this bird with its weird and ghastly scream, create an eerie beauty. Te “pillow word?” Since go’i, the name of the night heron, is identical in pronunciation and ideograph to Go’i (Te Five Modes) of Tung-shan, these are present as a shadow. August moon In its depths tonight the sound of fowers 5 �Kake Kotoba: Pivot Word the temple bell fades and the scent of cherry blossoms rises in the evening kane kiete hana no ka wa tsuku yube kana Te motion of the poem is carried by the pivotal verb tsuku, which means “strike” or “ring.” (Te cherry blossoms ring their scent.) Since kane (temple bell) and tsuku have the same phonetic element in their ideographs, hearing with your nose is the way to the poem’s interior. rice and beans warming the room too 6 �Te Right Word Rightly Used now being seen of, now seeing of—the outcome: autumn in Kiso Midway on my pilgrimage to see the full moon at Sarashina, friends bid me farewell. We wave and wave and wave till nothing is lef but autumn. windless day— dusk too disappears 7 �Mushin: Te Art of Artlessness look, children hailstones! let’s rush out! I am indoors. When the storm ends, me and my young friends run outside to see the hailstones all piled up—maybe gather some! waves crash and what with glorious peaks and fowers . . . 8 �Kokoro: Te Heart/Soul of a Poem coming along the mountain path I fnd something endearing about violets It reminds me of Ch’ang-sha’s response to the head monk who inquired afer his wanderings: “First I went following the scented grasses; then I returned following the falling blossoms.” He never strayed from the aesthetic point. Sometimes my poems are plain in setting, straightforward in structure, regular in pattern and lucid in diction. In fact, they look so ordinary, one wonders where their real meaning lies. Tese poems are intentionally plain and ambiguous. Tey present an incident without commentary to force the reader to experience it herself. Looking frivolous, this poem simply presents a violet blooming beside a road. I do comment—that I fnd it endearing—but it is vague. Te mountain road is lonely, tiresome. Suddenly, the loveliness of purple brightens a corner of the path. Te sensation I feel is so tender, so all-inclusive, specifcity would burden it, hamper a reader’s roaming, explorative mind. Hokku should not spell everything out. What remains unexpressed is rooted in its beauty’s source, deeper than human understanding. dawn melts into light, pale clouds rise picking herbs a young girl yawns 9 �Yu Wei: Afertaste the cry of the cuckoo goes slanting—ah! across the water hototogisu koe yokoto ya mizu no ue I composed this poem at the urging of my disciples Sanpu and Sora who, seeing me grief-stricken at my nephew’s death (which occurred in my hut), suggested that I write on the theme “hototogisu by the water’s edge.” I drew on the couplet of Su Tung-p’o—“Te gleaming water extends to heaven, / and the white mist lies stretched across the water,” which to me connotes not only the spaciousness of water but the bird’s lingering sound in its hovering mist. Te latter tails of like a comet or like smoke from a steam engine on a balmy summer day, like the vanishing spirit of Toin who faded away just as ephemerally. Kikaku calls it “magic” (when an aural perception suddenly becomes a visual one). Te hototogisu, a gray-headed Asian cuckoo whose song is a series of notes rather than the two notes (cuc-koo) normally associated with this bird, appears in the Fourth Month (May), at the beginning of summer, afer migrating from the south. Te very name, hototogisu, invokes its lonely cry. Tough it is traditional to think, “Even if the hototogisu sings noisily, one must compose in such a way as to suggest waiting for its voice impatiently,” I choose to portray its actual behavior. (Unlike most birds, which rest on trees while they sing, the hototogisu sings or cries as it 10 �fies.) Here, as the hototogisu soars overhead, its sharp penetrating cry lies sideways, hanging over the water’s surface, probably at dusk or night. Ue, the poem’s last word, means “surface” (as in water’s surface) but it includes the area above the surface. Te subtlety of that space prepares the space in one’s heart to receive the scream’s piercing land, like a sword, shattering all conceptions of cuckoo, cry, slanting, water. what is this sound in the evening wind as summer overlong lingers . . . 11 �Yugen: Depth of Meaning at the same inn play women too were sleeping: bush clover and the moon As legend has it, one day the monk Saigyo, having encountered a sudden shower in the village of Eguchi, asks for shelter at a nearby house but is denied by its mistress, a courtesan. Tereupon he sings: You’d never bring yourself to hate and forsake this world no matter how I plead . . . Yet, how can you begrudge to lend a temporary shelter? Te mistress responds with the waka: Knowing you are someone who has forsaken this world, I naturally thought you would not be concerned with this temporary shelter. Te story comes to mind as I see bush clover blooming in the garden and the autumn moon shining in the sky, seemingly companions. At the inn a similar bond develops between a traveling poet in gray robes and two pretty courtesans who also happen to lodge there. Regarding yugen, we have a proverb—“Te crow goes ‘caw-caw,’ the sparrow, ‘chirp-chirp.’” Truth itself spurns embellishment. 12 �a fsh, a leaf a moment in the river 13 �Aware: Ah—Elegant Sadness Matsushinma ya ah Matsushinma ya Matsushima ya Pine Islands, ah! Oh, Pine Islands, ah! Pine Islands, ah! Standing on the shore, seeing the two hundred islands carved by tides and wind-twisted pines rising at sharp angles . . . long gone, the monk who tolls the evening bell— yet its echo, in my heart, this rainy night 14 �Do Not Simply Follow in the Footseps of the Ancients. Seek What Tey Sought. the fragrance of chrysanthemums at Nara: many ancient Buddhas kiku no ka ya Nara ni wa furuki hotoke tachi On October 27th of 1694, on Chrysanthemum Festival Day (Choyo), which fell on the Ninth of the Ninth Month, I composed this poem while stopping in Nara (Japan’s capital in a period that saw Buddhism fourish as a state religion) on my way to Osaka. Te hokku can be taken as a single scene in which the “many ancient Buddhas” (furuki hotoketachi—a haikai phrase) are surrounded by chrysanthemum fowers (kiku), a seasonal word for autumn, but it is better rendered as a combination poem in which the two parts are unifed by scent. Te chrysanthemum, considered the aristocrat of fowers in classical poetry, possesses a powerful but refned fragrance (not sensual yet strong and pure, as in incense ofered to the Buddha). Furuki means not just old, but timeless. Te many Buddhas in the capital of Nara evoke a similar sense of dignity, solemnity, and grace. Inhaling their fragrance, one feels their life and breath. Te poem is rooted in nioi, a linking technique wherein a delicate, almost imperceptible fow of air moves from one stanza to the next. Here the nioi stays in a single verse. 15 �from my sagebrush bed the sky’s vault vast beyond it, vaster still . . . 16 �Kajitsi: Te Formal Aspects of a Poem (Ka is the “beautiful surface of the poem.” Jitsu is the “substantial core.” Studying both, Fujiwara-no-Kinto composed his Nine Steps of Waka, a reasoned study of the poem’s architecture.) I am resolved to bleach on the moors my body is pierced by the wind nozarashi wo kokoro ni kaze no shimu mi kana In the Eighth Month of the frst year of Jokyo, I leave my dilapidated hut on the riverside. Te autumn wind is blowing with an unaccountably chilling sound. Te hokku breaks afer ni (in). Kaze no (wind’s) begins the second clause. Tus elliptical wording in two parts (“My body is pierced by the wind and I am determined to bleach my bones on the moors”) is laid over a poem whose structure is in thirds. Increasingly aware of the pains of living, I wish to enter a realm of perfect liberation by any means possible. One way, suggested by the sages, is to travel—to go on a journey with all its hazards. I see in my mind’s eye my own skeleton, lost in the wilderness, beaten by rain and snow. In Japan, any travel is risky. Indeed, soon afer taking to the road, I am confronted with death in an abandoned child. 17 �But it’s not enough to simply travel. In fact, travel can be a distraction. As Huang-po Hsi-Yun said to his assembly: “You are all eaters of brewer’s dregs. If you go about on pilgrimage as you do, when can you meet today?” He was not attacking pilgrimage per se, he was scolding a lazy, absent-minded attitude. “You cannot meet today. You cannot meet this moment, if you just wander around consuming smelly secondhand truths.” near me near death trembling peony 18 �Te Lyricism of Tu Fu and Li Po, the Zen of Han Shan, and the Romantic Love of Po Chu-i= My Poetry’s Four Principal Flavors when I look carefully nazuna is blooming beneath the hedge If one looks around in the right frame of mind on a rainy evening or dewy morning, one will notice the tiniest of weeds fowering in response to the coming spring. As the Chinese say, “Everywhere I am startled to fnd things renewing themselves.” Attracted by fecks of white beneath a hedge, I pause to examine teeny four-petaled blossoms erupting with vigorous spirit. “Ah!” I exude, for when I discover something, it comes to exist for me for the frst time. As if I created it myself! Of all living beings, these little weeds (shepherd’s purse) have the least capacity to protect themselves. Tey simply endure what is given to them. Once I wrote in an unrelated postscript, “As we look calmly, we see everything is content with itself,” a line I derived from a poem by Ch’eng Ming-tao. It applies here as well. poppies open shatter in the wind today 19 �Wabi: Elegant Simplicity departing spring! birds crying tears in the eyes of fsh yuku haru ya tori naki uo no me wa namida Departing spring is the time just before the beginning of summer—the trees have blossomed and the rainy season is about to begin. I am poised to venture on my journey to the north (yuku, meaning both “to go” and “to pass time,” conveniently conveys ceaseless passage). Tis, the second hokku of my trip (the frst travel poem), is made to seem as if written as my friends are seeing me of at Senju, a northern suburb of Edo. Everyone weeps, aware of the hardship of the journey and the possibility that this separation could be forever. (Actually it was composed later, when I put Oku no hosomichi together.) Naki refers to the cry of any animal, though its homonym means “weep” so this meaning is an overtone. As “I” disappear, wind becomes my wailing voice. sloughing to Katada eyeing, and again, eying that unbudging cloud 20 �Each Poem, the “Only” Poem a cloud of blossoms— was that the bell of Ueno or Asakusa? As I am musing beneath a cloud of cherry blossoms, the distant BONG of a temple bell pierces my consciousness. “Tat was a temple bell!” I realize. “From what direction did it come? I’m not sure.” Ueno and Asakusa are names of districts in Edo that have large temples. My hut is just a few miles from both. Tough normally one could easily identify their bells, since it is cherry blossom season, all is wrapped in haze. Merging the delicious, dreamy mind of a man on a spring day with these “clouds” of blossoms, I feel as though distinctions are impossible. Clarity, purity, harmony, nonattachment—literalness can destroy their virtue. While we must be clear, the wandering thought, at times, is superior. Wu-men warns: “To be alert and never ambiguous is to wear chains and an iron yoke.” Te Ts’ai-ken t’an says, “Water which is too pure has no fsh.” tossing his ball through yesterday’s sky the child sleeps 21 �Compassion: Its Ever-Varied Face the whitebait! they open black eyes to the net of the law. Te title—“Inscription over a Picture of Kensu”—refers to Hsien-tzu, a T’ang-period fgure usually portrayed standing in a stream catching shrimps with a net. As to the Priest Hsien-tzu of Ching-Tiao, we do not know anything about his origins. Te record that remains is very strange. He had no fxed place of abode. Afer receiving transmission of mind from Tungshan Liang-chieh, he lived as a layman at the River Min. He did not cultivate Dharma devices, and he did not follow conventional modes of behavior. Each day, along the bank of the river, he set about catching prawns . . . When it got dark, he made his bed in the paper money at the White Horse Mausoleum of Tung-Shan. Te residents thereabouts called him Father Prawn. Money in old China was made of metal. Paper money was burned at funerals to supply the dead with fnances needed in the next world. Undoubtedly, the White Horse Mausoleum had a storeroom full—a comfortable spot for a character like Hsien-tzu. Whitebait are silvery fsh, tiny (an inch or so long), clean-looking, and lovable. Teir luminous black eyes, large and deep in proportion to their size, open calmly to the Law. While an ordinary Buddhist monk would never catch fsh or any other living creature, Master Shrimp’s viewpoint was that it didn’t matter, for the net that catches and kills is also the net of Dharma. 22 �curling in the heat young grass blades— up and up the mountain’s smoke 23 �Ordinariness: A Most Valuable Poetic Quality salted sea breams their gums too look cold— the fshmonger’s shelf Because of the stormy winter weather, shelves at the fsh shop are almost empty. Only two or three salted sea breams lay there, white teeth exposed. When my disciple, Kikaku, overpraises my image, saying that with it I had attained “true mystery and depth,” I tell him that what I most value is the poem’s “ordinariness.” “ouch!” that’s how you know a Sitka 24 �Sabishi: Spiritual Loneliness the morning glory! this too cannot be my friend asagao ya kore mo nata waga tomo narazu (Around the time when I closed the gate of my residence in Fukagawa is the poem’s title). Ya conveys the idea—“Tere is just this morning glory in the whole world.” Having returned to Edo (near the end of my life, a poet of some fame) I am forced to live more gregariously. Te leisure I’d enjoyed, along with natural beauty that helped dissolve my loneliness, are no longer accessible. In addition, I discover that the principle of sabi, at which I had arrived afer a long search, does not seem to be universally valid. While I want to be lef alone, to relish the morning glory’s friendship, not only am I now too old and weary to get up early enough, but even when I do, its lovely fowers fail to provide consolation. “as for their tororo” cries the man but no one pays attention 25 �Sabi: An Undertone of Loneliness from the Purer “Loneliness” of Sabishisa let my name be “traveler”; frst rains. It is the beginning of winter. As I am about to set out for Iga, near Kyoto, from my hermitage in Edo, it rains. Only a true “traveler” would understand why I go anyway. At my farewell party the night before, we compose a ren-ku. Tis stanza was its hokku and my host capped it may you have camellia fowers as shelter, night afer night as if to say, “All are wanderers, but if camellias do not punctuate our wandering . . .” Later the verse opens Oi no kobumi, preceded by the lines: Te weather was unsettled at the beginning of the Tenth Month, and I also felt as unsure of my future as a leaf in the wind. Tough the juxtaposition of “traveler” and “frst rains” may seem facile, with it I celebrate Saigyo’s waka, Sogi’s renga, Sesshu’s painting, Rikyu’s tea ceremony. Te host at Iwaki, a person called Chotaro, composes the wakiku and offers a farewell dinner at Kikaku’s residence: 26 �once more taking sasanquas for my lodging Tough my hokku certainly carries my resolve to travel and endure the loneliness and uncertainty implied in “frst rains,” I hope that it simultaneously conveys the fact that I (like ancient travelers) revel in the upcoming trip. “First rains” implies excitement—anticipation of delight. “Let my name be ‘traveler’” similarly echoes the words of the waki priest who introduces himself at the beginning of a Noh play before journeying to meet the spirits of the dead. (I like to attach text from this play to manuscript copies of the hokku.) Tus “frst rains” becomes a medium through which I travel across time, relishing with the “ancients” the ineluctable favor of fukyo (poetic “madness”). Te moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrif in a boat or in old age leading a tired horse into the years . . . in shallow wind, dead leaves whisper I wait for moon to rise above the peaks— how chill the grass once blooming with so many diferent fowers 27 �Makoto: Sincerity autumn nearing inclination of my mind! a four-and-a-half-mat room. At Bokusetsu’s hut in Otsu, on the twenty-frst day of the Sixth Month, the summer season had begun perceptibly to incline toward autumn. Grief-stricken at the news of Jutei’s death, in failing health, the bareness and simplicity of the tea room—my mind goes here. in the wild violets, birds— a child stops clutches her monkey 28 �Kokai: A Feeling of Regret Afer Reading a Poem come to my hut and hear the cry of the bagworm Tis poem, written in 1687, appears in Sequel to Empty Chestnuts with the headnote, “Listening to the Quiet.” In response, Sodo (a scholar of Chinese literature and a kanshi poet) writes a haibun essay called “Comment on the Bagworm” on which my “Postscript to ‘Comment on the Bagworm’” remarks. Te whole thing results in an extended prose dialogue, where, in linked-verse fashion, we alternately meditate on the nature of reclusion. Because of a passage in Te Pillow Book, the bagworm (minomushi, a seasonal word for autumn) is thought of as a creature that, with the arrival of the autumn winds, plaintively cries, “Father! Father!” (chichi yo chichi yo). In reality, the bagworm does not make any sound at all. It just sits in its little bag, gestating and metamorphosing into a moth. Another bagworm story: Once Vimalakirti, a contemporary of the Buddha, becomes ill. Te Buddha sends Manjushri with 32,000 bodhisattvas, arhats, and devas to inquire afer his health. (Vimlakirti graciously accommodates them all in his ten-by-ten-foot room.) “What is the bodhisattva-gate to the dharma of not-two?” someone asks. Everyone attempts to answer, but Vimalakirti? He says nothing. He just sits there like a bagworm. Still, everyone says he heard quite a lot, probably because teacher-student intimacy also is based in thundering silence. 29 �and still . . . your cypress hat hanging in its shadow stirs me through and through 30 �All Eternity Is Yesterday a village where no temple bell sounds— what do they do? twilight in spring. Written in the vicinity of Kanuma (in Shimotsuke Province), this hokku alludes to monk Noin’s waka in Shinkokinshu: spring nightfall in a mountain village where, at the sound of a bell tolling the close of a day, cherry blossoms keep falling When, at evening, a temple bell is struck, it echoes the great void. Whose resonance carries timelessness. Anyone who hears it must in some way feel validated. It recalls another poem: though in Kyoto I long for Kyoto the song of the cuckoo blossoms from a tree tremble, shake, fall . . . even afer waking their motion in my chest 31 �Karumi: Lightness in plum-blossom scent pop! the sun appears— the mountain path On the slopes of a pre-dawn mountain, groves of plum trees are in fragrant blossom. It is earliest spring. Bitterly cold. Plum trees hold snow as well as blossoms. With notto! I emerge from my absorption. For I am near death. Trudging along in the freezing, early morning, lost in the pervading plumblossom scent, just as I’m entirely ready for the sun—pop!—it appears! Tis hokku, composed with Yaba in Edo and subsequently published in Charcoal Sack, opens our sequence. Yaba’s wakiku keeps the same season—lingering winter cold—but expands it. here there pheasants cying as they fy away In Yaba’s verse, the sharp cries of the pheasants scattering from the grass echo the sun as it pops through the fragrant morning. And karumi? It’s the plain theme, lighthearted tone, and rich resonance of a dawn mountain road on a refreshingly beautiful February day. above fowers below fragrance o lotus! 32 �Zen Is Poetry. Poetry, Zen. summer grasses! the remains of dreams of warriors. I am visiting the ruins of Takadate Castle at Hiraizumi, where a historic battle was fought in the civil war of the late twelfh century. It was a terrible tragedy, ending with the great general Yoshitsune committing suicide afer killing his wife and children. Te hokku is preceded by a haibun essay: Te glory of three generations of Fujiwara vanished in the space of a dream; the remains of the Great Gate stood two miles in the distance. Hidehira’s headquarters had turned into rice paddies and wild felds. Only Kinkeizan, Golden Fowl Hill, remained as it was. First, we climbed Takadachi, Castle-on-the-Heights, from where we could see the Kitakami, a broad river that fowed from the south. Te Koromo River rounded Izumi Castle and, at a point beneath Castle-on-the-Heights, it dropped into the broad river. Te ancient ruins of Yasuhira and others, lying behind Koromo Barrier, appear to close of the southern entrance and guard against the Ainu barbarians. Selecting his loyal retainers, Yoshitsune fortifed himself in the castle, but his glory quickly turned to grass. ‘Te state is destroyed, / rivers and hills remain. / Te city walls turn to spring, / grasses and trees are green.’ With these lines from Tu Fu in my head, I lay down my bamboo hat, letting the time and tears fow. Te “remains of dreams / of warriors” are the dreams of the three generations of Fujiwara who valiantly conquered the Ainu tribesmen and built a splendid civilization only to see it disappear, and of Yoshitsune’s 33 �brave retainers who died for their master. Te ephemerality of ambitions is foreshadowed in the opening phrase of the prose passage, a reference to the Noh play Kantan, about a man (Rosei) who napped and dreamed a lifetime of glory and defeat while waiting for dinner. Tus the traveler takes on the aura of a waki (traveling priest) in a Noh warrior play who visits the site of a former battlefeld and then, as if in a dream, watches the ghost of a slain soldier re-enact his most tragic moments on the battlefeld. In the green, green, warm-blooded grass, the glorious luxuriance of summer joins vanishing chasm of dreams. in the deutzia Kanefusa appears white-haired [Sora’s capping verse] lovely! lovely! her discarded stems caught by the photographer 34 �Get on a Sleigh: BUSON’S HEART SONG ��Born near the sunlit Naniwa River, I spend many springs and autumns in the bird-crying eastern country. 37 �[1] Kema is a farming village. With clear weather we can see the Ikoma Mountains in the east and the Senri Hills lying low across the river to the north. spring thaw— one small carp hides in the shallows 38 �[2] In spring, the mustard’s yellow blossoms blow in beds as far as eye can see. As willows lose their leaves, bush clover, madder and maidenfower burst into bloom. ’neath white-crane sky, the old year sinks out back on the hill I stand in fukakusa grass 39 �[3] With autumn, falling blocks fll the air with sadness. Wild boars knock dew from the maiden-fowers with their tusks. autumn begins— here and there windows partially-closed 40 �[4] Winter starts with drizzle, then turns into squalls, frst of rain, then rain mixed with snow. Ducks and geese migrate from the north. Sometimes we spot whales. old, old, old the sound of the mountain today 41 �[5] But it’s the fox fres that grab me, mysterious lights glowing in tall dry grass. Winter showers sound like rats scrambling across a koto. how red, yet teeny (tiny)— plum blossom buds in the cold north wind 42 �My master Soa calls his house at Nihonbashi Yahantei (Midnight Pavilion) because nearby is a bell tower whose midnight toll reminds him of Chang Chi’s “Te sound of the midnight bell reaches a traveler’s boat.” 43 �[6] Here’s a story about Ihoku (a friend) that typifes my years with Soa: For a while Ihoku lives in the north. When he comes back to Edo, he has a hard time and stays in a miserable cottage on the edge of town. Soon he uses up his money on food and rent. At which point I help him set up a monthly poetry circle. I run all over town and do everything I can. Before long, Ihoku’s place becomes a popular spot, the center of a fourishing circle. a butterfy crosses my cryptomeria hedge circles the neighboring garden and comes wheeling back futtering in the pine tops over the water basin 44 �[7] Ihoku, meantime, has a valuable letter that Kikaku had once written. To thank me for my help, he ofers me this prized possession, but I say, “No thank you. In my place it would be like a ‘green rug.’ Tere is a Chinese anecdote about a famous ofcial who wakes up in the night to fnd thieves taking everything. “Wait,” he cries. “Tat green rug is a family heirloom. Would you please leave it behind?” I feel that I am too poor to keep an object merely of sentiment. night falls: catching the stream’s current a wooden clog 45 �[8] Abruptly Soa dies. I sit in his empty room. I go through his papers and try to compile a work that I want to entitle “Lone Crow.” But it is no use. For the next ten years I simply wander. ho! a blossom! one magic purple fower below the torma and ofering-bowls of rice 46 �With my rather high forehead, thick eyebrows and crooked moustache, my shadow-of-a-beard looks not so much as if I let it grow on purpose as if I carelessly neglected to shave. 47 �[9] First I stay with Jou whose villa is covered by trees and overgrown with grass. One autumn night while his old caretaker idles away the evening, Buddhist rosary in hand, I am in a back room struggling to compose hokku. Afer a while I pull a quilt over me and as I’m beginning to doze of, I hear loud banging sounds on the storm doors enclosing the veranda. Tere are twenty or thirty bangs and my heart is pounding fast, but when I get up to look, no one is there. I go back to bed. Te same thing happens again. Utterly unnerved, I ask the caretaker about it. “it’s father!” cries the son spotting in some branches an imperceptible breeze 48 �[10] “It’s a badger. Next time he comes, you chase him away. I’ll go out the back, hide behind a hedge and wait for him.” Before long the bangs start. “Tere he is!” I open the door. With a cry the old man dashes out. But there’s not a soul in sight. Tis same incident occurs for four consecutive nights. Just as I’m feeling too exhausted to stay in the villa, Jou’s head servant comes to see us. “Early this morning, a villager killed an old badger at a place called Yabushita,” he says. “I’m sure he is the one playing tricks on you. Please have a restful sleep tonight.” late winter night— on the kettle hanger paused I see it seeing me see 49 �[11] Sure enough, the badger doesn’t come. But I feel sorry for the animal. I don’t like what he has done to me, but then again, he is a visitor who has come to console this lonely traveler sleeping away from home. Perhaps he and I have karmic ties. I am so grief-stricken that I give alms to a mendicant friar called Zenku and ask him to ofer prayers for the badger’s soul. white sails chase the passing sound of rain— below the waves, one trailed cloud-scrap 50 �[12] Following Basho north I too dress as a monk. My shaven head shows every bump and irregularity. Te venture takes a year during which time I become ill, go hungry and sufer from extreme heat and cold. daybreak—pale fowers— glancing at the moon an old man stoops 51 �[13] While I neither keep a diary nor write many poems (life on the road is simply too harsh and painful), at Ashino, the place of Saigyo’s famous tree, I cannot help myself. the willow is bare the clear stream has dried, and stones lie scattered here and there You may recall that Basho, when he visited this spot, wrote: over an entire feld they have planted rice—before I part with the willow What with the willow’s lacking leaves and the stream lacking water, my scene seems more desolate than that of both Saigyo and Basho. It may be, however, that I am more lonely. but when the felds are cut the smell from hulling rice— feels more elegant and leisurely 52 �Tao Ch’ien’s prose poem “Return Home!” begins: “I will go home. My felds and garden are lying in waste.” 53 �[14] Near Kema, in the province of Tango, ’neath the shadow of Mount Oe, rough waves pound on rocky bays and inlets. Winter breakers toss white foam as if to meet the sky. frosty tree, sparkling sun, from dazzling limbs one spinning twig 54 �[15] Su Shih’s prose, “Te mountains towering high, the moon looks small; the level of water having fallen, the stones are exposed,” I fnd especially poignant. yellow wings, yellow light to somewhere far of their zigzag trail 55 �[16] A narrow strip of land juts far into the bay. (Sesshu has painted the slender strand of pine that stretches across the water almost meeting the mountains on the other side and forming a lagoon.) Around this lip, that quivers like a living thing, tall peaks lock the bay as if in a huge womb. rufing the lake its moony midnight glaze— waterbird’s dream 56 �[17] It is ofen said that in Japanese music, the space between the notes is the most important part. For me, time away from Kyoto is like this. Sitting in muggy Shikoku, I think of the sof new shoots on one of my favorite trees and realize that now I truly belong to Kyoto. I lean against thin railing lif my face to rain look! a pair of swallows 57 ��Water goes and clouds stay. Trees are old. Birds sleep. Te dark bamboo forest looks as though steam still lingers from his tea kettle. 59 �[18] come, traveler, get on a sleigh and visit us from the land of the Buddhas I call out. Both (the collection and gathering) are hosted by Shoha’s son, Kuroyanagi Korehoma. As I remember the poet, close to death, grasping my hand saying tearfully, “I’m sorry I won’t be able to join you in the new haikai movement,” I now, like then, cannot stop crying. “My haikai has disappeared into the western land of death,” poor Shoha lamented again and again. dawn, snowy dawn— from the hunter, crane’s asylum 60 �[19] ring around the moon like a frayed old umbrella— cold drizzle ahead Te old umbrella describing the ring also stands for the shimmering light of the moon at the coldest time of the year. It is not used for the autumn moon, but only in winter, as Master Nankaku once said. scattering its petals, a single rose— huddled against cold I watch 61 �[20] “What can a poet do to arrive at such a transcendental state of mind?” Shoha asks. “Study Chinese poetry,” I answer. plucking, this fall, one red chrysanthemum which I sketch but never fathom 62 �[21] Te poet should not deliberately try to write a poem. He is to wait until his mind reaches the state most susceptible to poetic creation. When that state arrives, he should start composing with his eyes closed, since the verse is to mirror the landscape he sees in his mind’s eye. Te composition has to be done in the presence of past masters, because haikai is a traditional verse form. Te masters will disappear as soon as the creative process is over. All that is lef will be a poetic paradise that is the poet’s own. from a mountain bird a mountain song— piercing the blustery wind 63 �[22] To Masana and Shunsaku: cool feeling! detached from a bell the sound of the bell moon afer rainfall who is it at night with white limbs? Tese are not in the fashionable style. Too much fashion is annoying. piled on its leaves midnight snow ah . . . white camellia . . . 64 �I overhear people saying of me, “How hale and hearty the old man is!” 65 �[23] I love Kyoto’s beautiful landscapes and never forget to view cherry blossoms and the red maple leaves of the eastern suburbs and western mountain. vesper bells: absorbing their echo sparkling wisps of red and black 66 �[24] I have been very close to the courtesan Koito. Once, in fact, Doryu, who is (no surprise) a Confucian scholar, remonstrates with me. I admit that because of my useless romantic feeling, I lose my dignity in my old age. Tough I forbid myself, I continue to see her— it’s well-known. tonight, it’s my bird’s tin roof that the moon appropriates for a mirror 67 �[25] Admittedly I am troubled when my bantering mood spills over into renku. carolers depart but the wind . . . I linger on the doorstep 68 �[26] Toward the end of autumn, I drag my walking stick to a place called Tahara in the farther part of Uji. I let my eyes be pleased with high clifs, cascading water, odd stones and strange rocks. I write a tearing of silk streaming out from a biwa the voice of autumn while recalling Po Chu-i’s “Four strings, one voice, like the tearing of silk cloth.” though clear, the fountain runs deep— near a shimmery root the tea master lingers 69 �[27] While the young people are greedily hurrying ahead, I, far behind, quietly look from place to place. I fnd fve mushrooms as big as small grass huts. How splendid! I wonder why Chief Counselor of State, Lord Uji TAkakuni, wrote only about the strangeness of hiratake mushrooms and never mentions the splendor of matsutake. you should see the fve mushrooms with dew-drops that were not picked! the squirrel gallops of— in its wake of leaves two butterfies wrestle 70 �[28] Uji River’s most rapid torrents are at a place called Komekashi. Water and rocks struggle with each other. Splashing, leaping waves make a spray like fying snow. Te sound roaring in the gorge overpowers human voices. a mother to her doe— with each call the moon, in mist, lowers 71 �[29] Ten the withered winter sky with quiet rainfall. Late crickets sing. Wind, morning and evening, penetrate my robes. But I get sick. My chronic chest pains worsen. Inside I know that my life is ending. as the Chinese bellfowers and pinks go to seed the long-awaited bush clover begins to open— though I tenderly wash them, the buds on the tips of the muddied clover rot without blooming 72 �Dusk falls early in the afernoon. Showers come frequently. 73 �[30] Around the middle of December, though my inner sickness seems to pass out of my body and my sufering appears to be healing, I have no appetite, my body and mind are exhausted and each day hope seems less. Everyone gathers and wishes only for my good. from earth, sky, trees not a single sign— yet autumn . . . 74 �[31] Tomo, Kuno, Gekkei, Baitei—many both in morning and evening help me rise and lie down, but I moan, especially on the twenty-second and twenty-third nights. I can tell that people feel extremely downhearted and unsure watching this sick face. I say, “Tis stupid old man’s wishes are all fulflled. But my daughter has no worldly connections, and the matter of her future lingers in my mind. Perhaps afer I go, two or three of you people may show her kindness. Well, concern over things will get in the way of passing on with a peaceful mind.” With that I pull the quilt over my face. brittle, shiny, brown— burrowing beetles, as winter appears, wall up their doors with earth 75 �[32] Dawn is near. My family and students are beside me. Closing my eyes I hear myself say, “Te time has come for me to leave this world. Is the night still deep?” winter sun sets but glistens still in the rock-moving Zen master’s headband 76 �[33] On the night of the twenty-fourth, my sick body is very calm and my speaking becomes natural again. I call Gekkei and say, “I made some poems during my sickness. Write them down quickly.” Brush and inkstone are prepared and I recite: winter uguisu— long ago in Wang Wei’s garden hedge too! uguisu! what is that rustling— frost on the bushes And afer a while: with white plum blossoms these nights to the faint light of dawn are turning 77 ��ISSA ISSA ��oh Issa carver of poems even in soba four 81 �[1] Listen. A mother crow caws pitiably for her injured young. As for me, I sometimes wonder, which is worse—feeling the feelings of the distraught crow or feeling the lack of them? scattered seeds— on hunter’s soil a crane 82 �[2] When I hear the story of the stepmother who agrees to feed her near-famished stepchild only if the village statue eats the rice she cruelly makes him ofer it (of course the stone statue wolfs it down) I can’t resist: serves the old woman right— now she must feed her own children her stepchild and the stone statue Basho your rainproof paper hat the one you made imitating Saigyo’s— I too have felt desperately alone 83 �[3] Tough Senroku and I have diferent mothers, that in itself would not account for the hostility between us. Surely we were enemies in a previous life. Satsu also, vicious and contentious as she mostly is, cannot be without motives carried over from a former debt. fog rolls in— fat gulls hover over the water 84 �[4] Father’s words, arising from his delirium, “Don’t fall in the well! Don’t fall in the well!”—I would die to be again the child he has in mind. New Year’s Eve listen— snow is falling 85 �[5] When Satsu hears “Don’t fall in the well!” she screams (beet-red, pointing a fnger at the dying man), “Your precious son! So you love him as much as this?” scattering rice… pigeons and sparrows shoo away the clucking chicks 86 �[6] “While you are in Zenkoji would you please bring me some sugar,” father requests towards dawn. (Sugar forces down the phlegm that interferes with his breathing.) Satsu: “It’s just wasted on someone about to die.” She rattles on, really being bothered by the fact that father shares his sugar with me. full moon—facing it knees braced beneath my robe 87 �[7] Children from my village observe a peculiar custom: capturing a lively frog they bury it, cover its grave with plantain grass, and run away: Hey ho! Te frog is dead! Hey ho! Te frog is dead! Come, let us bury him, Come, let us bury him, Under plantain leaves! Under plantain leaves! bowing over the frog’s grave— cherry blossoms 88 �[8] Having planted a chestnut in a sunny corner of my garden, I am thrilled to see it sprout, but soon, a new addition on my neighbor’s house blocks it from light and rain. Tereafer my seedling manages to grow little more than a foot. When winter comes, my neighbor shovels snow of his roofop onto the ground breaking the sapling at its base. Indeed, such is the fate of this poor tree that every winter, snow from the roof stunts it again. draped over a stone— are you dead yet little goldfsh 89 �[9] Having walked a good way beyond the village of Tsuchikuchi to visit Chorai, my beloved friend, I learn he has been dead these ffeen years. His successor (a priest) denies me even so much as a place to rest. wet spring night… wandering aimlessly Chorai close by 90 �[10] As for my unpaid debt to father (a drifer is hardly flial)—my wanderings, my staying away till my hair is white—no wonder I consider whether the Five Violations can be worse than this. even in his company seeing his gray hair I long for his company 91 �[11] My inability to sever the ties of afection for my daughter Sato refects a profound misunderstanding of the nature of impermanence. For this reason I am deeply embarrassed. Yet I hear of enlightened masters pleading with their teachers, “Don’t die, don’t die, please don’t leave us.” midsummer night— the feverish man frets over his little boy of years ago 92 �[12] I quickly forgive Takamaru’s parents for weeping shamelessly, even though they are priests who preach indiference to life’s vicissitudes. “Who can blame them?” I assure myself. “It is only human that their hearts should be deeply oppressed by their unbreakable attachment to the child.” wedged in the pocket of the drowned boy, blossoms of butterbur 93 �[13] As for the hollow New Year observances, you’ll fnd no crane, no tortoise, no pine beside my door. Why should I sweep out the dust when my tiny cottage might, at any moment, be whisked away by the wild north wind? silent house silent snow I stand in the moonlit doorway 94 �[14] my Kiku— she never cares how she looks I inscribe imagining I am capturing something of my wife with her baggy mompe, cotton kerchief, and scarlet braids. Now I see that I, who think nothing of visiting the Lord of Kaga in my scraggly clothes, am merely recognizing (and admiring) something of myself in this lackadaisical side to her. morning-glories stumbling upon them outside my gate 95 �[15] No matter how many villagers pick fruit from the old chestnut tree near Suwa Shrine, it never lacks (at the very fewest) one or two of its little prickly husks for the next hungry person. dusk cakes rising on the stove— the moon 96 �[16] Until he learns its meaning, Ota, the wealthy baron, is naturally irritated at receiving from the farmer’s daughter, instead of the cape he requests in the sudden rainstorm, a sprig of kerria. He is deeply embarrassed however to learn from a retainer that her gesture, being a punning allusion to an old poem, is a poetical way of expressing that no cape is available. Ashamed of his ignorance, he becomes an eager student of literature. dawn sofly sofly through the undergrowth 97 ��SHIKI: EPITAPH OF A FLOWER ��[1] My father dies. I am fve. In order to support Ritsu and me, mother sews. Te living room is constantly cluttered with her paraphernalia. carrying dawn a dove sails of— following it with my eyes 101 �[2] One day, while my uncle, Kato Tsunetada, is massaging my maternal grandfather’s back, Kinbei, owner of the Tanakaya pawn shop on Tojin Street, walks in without even knocking and demands payment of a debt. Displaying a polite amount of embarrassment, grandfather replies, “Kinbei, I am so sorry. I can barely aford rice for our New Year’s cakes. Te children are screaming for their kites. I will surely pay you afer the New Year. Please be patient.” a temple gate creaks— the sound of wind through the door-crack 102 �[3] At frst silent, Kinbei stands up muttering angrily, “What do I care about your kites and your rice cakes? At least I can take this!” and he storms out carrying my mother’s precious brass handwashing basin. Not noticing mother’s pain, grandfather remarks, “Kinbei always was a man of action.” bolt upright on the still, blue water— morning moon 103 �[4] Uncle Tsunetada notices. He resolves at once to retrieve the handbasin. During the day he pounds rice. At night he copies text from elementary-school books. Afer several months he proudly redeems the basin whereupon grandfather looks at him with annoyance, “Do you suppose you’ll become a great man by worrying about such trivial things?” “how charming!” I think, seeing one wisteria tuf, trailing from its vase onto my pile of books 104 �[5] Later, when uncle and I are walking in the country he happens to say, “It is remarkable how a piece of white paper will turn black when you spill India ink on it.” Ten he refects, “When a man puts on a woman’s clothes and does his hair up like a woman, he looks just like a woman. Yet a man is a man; one can never say he is a woman.” His words are stirring and I cannot help but think, “Tree years of study seem worthless compared to this conversation.” “no, not the scarlet peach blooms, it’s the forsythia . . .” I say to the fower lady 105 �[6] While I am aware that philosophy is serious and literature is not serious (Buddhist priests, for example, don’t write novels), I am also aware that I cannot live without novels. “more arrogant than a farmer which he is not”—he reads— drenched in a ray of sun 106 �[7] I am eighteen when I start writing haiku. At nineteen I call on old Ohara Kiju (a disciple of Baishitsu, one of the three great haiku masters of the Tempo era) whose study (I take this as a sign of his complete dedication and immersion) is wall-to-wall haiku. Kijo is very kind and reads my poems. By way of response, he composes two of his own about a dragon bounding over Mt. Fuji. I hope it’s not too presumptuous to read this as an endorsement—that he is confdent I will become a great poet. so cool, the sea through a hole in the storm lantern— Buddha too opens his altar doors 107 �[8] My interest in haiku and novels begins to overshadow the attraction of my university classes. At one point I actually stop attending them and move out of the dormitory. I rent a house in Komagome, a very quiet spot suited to the studying I plan to do. But when I sit down to study, a haiku emerges before I even read the frst page. Since I have dutifully put everything related to poetry aside in order to force myself to concentrate on the task at hand (my university exams), I don’t have anything on which to write my poem. So I write it on the lampshade. Soon I become engrossed in covering the lampshade with haiku. bulging, swelling rosebuds on my fence— “hello rosebuds!” 108 �[9] Needless to say, I fail my exams. Which gives me an excuse to withdraw from school once and for all. beyond young leaves water, wheat, the mirage aswirl with sun 109 �[10] I am twenty-two when I frst cough up blood. In response I adopt the penname Shiki which means hototogisu, the bird that (according to legend) coughs blood as it sings. Having made this concession to my illness, I proceed to live an intensely active life with the result that I sufer several more lung hemorrhages. summer dawn— a slug, its crawl, smearing the dewdrop 110 �[11] When the Sino-Japanese War breaks out, with all my heart I wish to go to China. My two friends, Kuga and Iogi are adamantly opposed. Iogi, a surgeon, reminds me that, if nothing else, the sanitary conditions should dissuade me. My greatest enemy, he stresses, are not shells and bullets. If I fall ill, there will be no medical care. As the boat chugs away, the clarity of its whistle arouses the thought, “I will never return alive.” clipping roses in a clear spell— from my bed hearing the shears 111 �[12] Ironically, even as we wait to disembark, a truce is declared. at his gate instead of sun . . . its memory in his body 112 �[13] Aboard ship I cough up blood. Te hemorrhaging continues, as drugs (except for cholera) are unavailable. Even so, a case of cholera breaks out, with the consequence that when our ship docks in Shimonoseki, disembarking is prohibited. Instead, the ship proceeds to a quarantine station. Six full days we are detained, at which point I am so weak I have to be carried by stretcher to the Kobe hospital. “you see,” she says— as she cleans its cage the bird begins to sing 113 �[14] Te pain hits my pelvis. I can barely walk, which means I can no longer avoid facing the fact that I have tuberculosis, that it is incurable, and that I will never be able to do anything more strenuous than read and write. As you might expect, I become ferce about reading and writing. pelting rain: my life and lives in the cock’s sober cry 114 �[15] Having set my heart on a lineage, I think my life is over the day Kyoshi, a mere boy, refuses to be my literary heir. My disappointment refects my own immaturity. One needn’t ask. Kyoshi, along with Hekigodo, are to become my literary heirs whether they want to or not. from rock to rock lifing his robe . . . even the stream seems to curtsy 115 �[16] Kyoshi’s refusal comes as a great shock. He admits that he wants to be a writer but not badly enough to study. I say, “Ten your aims and mine are completely diferent.” ’neath a thinner and thinner moon slender branches shiver with the bell 116 �[17] We leave the restaurant separately. Hands in the sleeves of my kimono, I drif aimlessly back to Uguisu Lane. summer evening— even my jacket wants to fee 117 �[18] Formerly I was desperate; now I am alone with no one but my dying self to rely on. the waterbird’s neck as the rainbow gathers its clarity 118 �[19] Dawn peeps through the shabby paper glued over a hole in my screen. one limb in a spot of light turns . . . suddenly. . . up 119 �[20] In my dream a tormented beast accepts the paw ofered by a gentle rabbit. taking the rabbit’s paw in both of its own— kissing it So exciting is my dream that my underkimono soaks through with sweat and my temperature soars to 102 degrees. misty dawn— in my fre in full color 120 �[21] Mother and Ritsu cannot leave my side. Sachiio, Hekigoto, Kyoshi and Sokotsu take turns trying to divert me. Diarrhea, fatulence, nosebleeds, migraines—my only hope is morphine, but since my allotment is restricted, relief is never long. crows at four, sparrows at fve thus I reckon the endless summer night 121 �[22] “Some dumplings would sure taste good right now,” I say cheerfully. Ritsu doesn’t respond. So I say, “Go now. Buy me some dumplings!” What is an invalid to do? evening falls— from the shadow of a hill the old man’s sigh 122 �[23] With the canary, however, Ritsu sits motionless in front of its cage for hours at a time, simply gazing. “is today Wednesday? I thought . . .” she begins stroking its light blue feathers 123 �[24] Tough I care more for the sublime in poetry than the elegant, more than both, I care for plainness, its pleasant freshness. For example, when I write about Ritsu awakening from a nap and swatting a fy, commonplace though this image may be, my particular perspective conveys the heat, my sister’s exhaustion nursing me, my crankiness and inability to sleep and a little of her embarrassment in the face of having dozed in front of me. is it death it paints this mirror moon lighting my eyebrows? 124 �[25] Actually, it is not just tone but scale—the seeming banality—that give my poems the unassuming, mortal quality, that I have come to so appreciate. I could be talking to myself. in the bubbles of a spring how still its horny body 125 �[26] From 1897 I have to wait, virtually immobilized, in steadily increasing pain, for death to come. My infamed spinal cord, tubercular boils, pus and festering sores are agonizing. Since there is no treatment, all that can be done is to wipe away the pus and wrap the sores in cotton bandages. I am a mass of oozing slime girded in oiled paper. hot-water bottle tepid I hug it anyway, cheered, somehow, by a glimpse of winter moon 126 �[27] Bujian and I correspond until he dies, of my same disease. Tat is spring 1901. Some time later, members of his family pay me a call. Tey are struck by our many similar mannerisms—not letting our nurses leave our bedside even for a second, becoming angry when demands are not fulflled before we even fnish expressing them, fnding it difcult to breath in the presence of a large person, showing intense likes and dislikes of people, feeling pain if the coverlet is hard but also if it is sof, overeating and becoming furious if visitors comment on our lack of thinness whereupon we both poke out our match-stick legs saying, “How ’bout these?” Bujian Bujian you are my brother— we have never met but only you understand how I sufer 127 �[28] Living with ever-palpable death, my relationship with time is diferent from most people’s. On the one hand, it passes slowly, making boredom a constant torment. On the other, it seems feeting, leaving me with an unsheddable sense of urgency. spring evening: squandering its light the cloister’s duf 128 �[29] I take pleasure in the bathing drama that goes on inside my large wire birdcage. It used to be that even before one’s hand is out of the cage, having replenished the water in their basin, the fnches arrive and splash away till most of the water is gone. Which, needless to say, leaves the other birds very little to go on. Lately, however, I’ve noticed that the two black-headed manikins zip in ahead of the fnches. Afer them come the Jakarta sparrows, the zebra fnches and fnally the canaries. Te basin’s edge is thronged with birds in order of arrival. As each pair fnishes, they fy up to their perch and fap their wings furiously. Teir joy is so great, I am not even jealous. just outside my door they chirp and play— I myself have not been able to bathe for fve years 129 �[30] when I can read at all I read newspapers and magazines even at this, pain ofen interferes Te boy who was so promising, who at age eleven wrote poems in classic Chinese, never expected to be reduced to statements like the above. “your chrysanthemums, honey, you know that pink . . .” but her voice trails of 130 �[31] When my diaper is changed, I peek at my abdomen. (It’s been hurting a lot these past few days.) It is completely black. I’m sure another fstula will open. windy night loosely fastened, beyond the moor— to whom might it belong? 131 �[32] Six months later (March 1902) I gather all my strength and look at the fstula on my stomach for the frst time. I expect it to be small, but it is a hollow. ladling trout ’neath the mountain’s blue sky the surprise, my surprise! 132 �[33] Meanwhile I cannot write at all. I must dictate what I have to say. spring quail from Shimosa’s Yuki Village— oh teeth, would that you were here! 133 �[34] Lef alone one autumn night, my eye falls on a penknife and an eyeleteer on the inkstone box. I think of the razor in the next room, but I can’t even crawl. demure yew in the shade waiting your turn 134 �[35] Instructions for My Funeral: I feel it necessary to formalize such directives because of the tendency people have to misconstrue a thing. My death is an occasion for joy. Let’s not mince words. I want: No advertisement No speeches No posthumous Buddhist name No tombstone made of natural stone No wake before the cofn No tears Please laugh and talk in an ordinary way. Celebrate! “in the shade of trees I sleep”— this, on a piece of paper tied to his quiver 135 �[36] Today, as usual, it rains. My grogginess is intolerable, so I take morphine. Ten I try to sketch the Ezo chrysanthemum. abandoned train station a stone Buddha sits autumn leaves in hand 136 �[37] Four or fve years ago, when I frst became an invalid, I used to say I wouldn’t mind being unable to walk far, if only I could walk in my garden. Afer a few years, when I could no longer walk, it still seemed that simply being able to stand up would be a joy. By the summer before last I had reached the point where I grumbled, “I’m not hoping to stand—I only ask the god of sickness to let me sit up.” Yesterday and today my plaint has been, “Who cares about sitting up? What joy to simply be free of pain, able to lie down in comfort for a single hour!” along the railbed too on the road to Akabane— next year I’ll have time 137 �[38] Morphine Diary—1902 I take the drug two to four times daily along with sedatives and medicine for my stomach— even so my condition gets worse— that crow where we hang the wash looks at me . . . looks away 138 �[39] I cannot think the evening news confuses me I cannot write or talk with any degree of coherence occasionally I lif my head peer through the glass at the garden’s rampant bushclover 139 �[40] I cannot move my body— only if I take three doses of painkiller can I achieve, even for a short while, a sense of well-being “to bloom afresh stick wilted stems in strong sake”— if it works for wisteria, churns my mind . . . 140 �[41] my body hurts I have no strength even to take up my writing brush— to whom shall I talk how shall I pass the day “how deep is it now?” “has it buried the pampas grass “yet?” 141 �[42] I have legs like someone else’s legs I have legs like huge immovable stones if one so much as touches them all the earth’s plants and trees cry out heaven and earth quake the stalks his knife— the monk hesitates 142 �[43] call Kyoshi too please call Kyoshi too— Ritsu hold my writing board Hekigoto guide my brush and Shiki—too weak to speak— slowly write three deathbed poems windy winter night— wild ducks settle into sleep in the harbor where the boats tie up 143 �Te Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of ffeenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The haiku masters : four poetic diaries Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2008 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780979472138 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_162 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Preface by Andrew Schelling Basho: Epock of Dusk Get on a Sleigh: Buson's Heart Song Issa Issa Shiki: Epitaph of a Flower Extent The size or duration of the resource. 156 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/2b8588c98abddf38ad4f3f7da1d1c28d.pdf 8a0e6fef5a7fd1d3b258379ec4f972f2 PDF Text Text in limited editions, hand-wrapped in Japanese paper and given to friends and family as New Year’s gifts. By using extended sequences of haiku to describe the life-cycle of small animals in the wild, Gail Sher stretches the poetic form in ways that are fresh, unexpected and original. G ail S her is the author of One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers (Penguin), the first of a widely- F I V E H A I K U N A R R AT I V E S These unique “stories in haiku form” were first printed praised series of books on writing as a practice. Writing “a haiku a day” was her own beginning practice. Her haiku, initially published in literary magazines, went on to win awards in the United States and Japan and became Gail is one of just ninety-one ordained lay disciples of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, the person credited with bringing Soto Zen Buddhism to the West. She practiced Zen for many years at both Tassajara Zen Mountain Center GAIL SHER the foundation of her highly experimental poetic work. and San Francisco City Center. Today, in addition to her own writing, she provides consultation to writers, supervison to clinicians in training, and psychotherapy to in San Francisco’s East Bay. FPO PLACE BARCODE HERE NIGHT CRANE PRESS adolescents and adults. She practices Tibetan Buddhism F I V E H A I K U N A R R AT I V E S GAIL SHER �f i v e h a i k u na r r at i v e s �Also by Gail Sher prose One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive From a Baker’s Kitchen poetry Ezekiel Sunny Day, Spring Mingling the Threefold Sky The Twelve Nidānas Figures in Blue The Bardo Books White Bird Mother’s Warm Breath The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries though actually it is the same earth East Wind Melts the Ice The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call old dri’s lament Calliope Who: A Licchavi Watching Slow Flowers DOHA Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse redwind daylong daylong Once There Was Grass RAGA Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms Moon of The Swaying Buds Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross Fifty Jigsawed Bones Saffron Wings Marginalia One bug ... one mouth ... snap! La Like A Crane At Night Kuklos COPS Broke Aide Rouge to Beak Having Me (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem From Another Point of View The Woman Seems to Be Resting �f i v e h a i k u na r r at i v e s Like A Crane at Night One bug … One mouth … Snap! Saffron Wings Fifty Jigsawed Bones Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross GAIL SHER Night Crane Press 2015 �Copyright 1996-2015 Gail Sher www.gailsher.com All rights reserved Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permisssion from the copyright owner and publisher. ISBN: 978-0-9858843-5-2 �for Brendan ��preface Each one of these “stories in haiku form” was originally printed as a small, limited-edition book, hand-wrapped in Japanese paper and given as a New Year’s gift to friends and family. Using extended sequences of haiku to describe the life-cycle of small animals in the wild—including turtles, butterflies, and cranes—stretches the poetic form in ways that are unexpected and, I hope, revealing. May this one-volume collection bring enjoyment to a wider audience and happiness and the causes of happiness to all suffering beings wherever they may be and whatever form they may take. ��contents Like a Crane at Night 1 One Bug … One Mouth … Snap! 45 Saffron Wings 133 Fifty Jigsawed Bones 197 Lines: the Life of a Laysan Albatross 251 ��Like a Crane at Night A day at Kushiro Marsh, nesting ground for Japanese Cranes on the northern island of Hokkaido �daybreak daybreak— vapor rising over just-stirring birds 2 �silence but for buntings twittering in the sedge 3 �notes of a reed-warbler riddle this icy morning 4 �male on nest— his cry in the rising meltwater 5 �sunrise sunrise— swelling in the marsh water new grass 6 �April thaw— twigs in ice cover the bud 7 �straggling through the cloven ice— yellow floweret 8 �dead stalks of kitayoshi conceal the nest from the gunman kitayoshi = “reeds of the north” 9 �morning spring morning— a speckled egg on the grassy hummock 10 �snowflakes dust the new-born chick From December to April, Kushiro Marsh is almost completely frozen over, thus snow is still present in springtime. 11 �righting itself shuddering—gently shaking its wings 12 �staring at the second egg tawny chick— still 13 �noontide broad-winged bird silhouette swaying in the noontide 14 �wind-driven snow and you—oh white bird bouncing, leaping treading air in the squall 15 �white bird, blue sky wingspan arched gilded by the sunlight 16 �swift upbeat of wings followed by slow feathering of the air 17 �singing her solo pierces the winter sky 18 �a full-throated call— arching, hoisting his wings toward the trespasser 19 �necks cross puffs condense in the chilly air 20 �Crook, Crook! he cries then ceases abruptly when it’s over 21 �feeding thick green duckweed— a yearling dives under to feed 22 �a fledgling drinks … insects float on the stagnant swamp 23 �minnow in its beak young crane stops in the rippling bog 24 �a wriggling fish tossing it catching it further down the bill The small eel-like dojo, a kind of loach or mudfish, is the crane’s favorite treat in spring and summer. 25 �preying passing a cow four cranes—graze the summer pasture 26 �craning its neck scamming the bird red fox motionless 27 �dashing through a stand of spruce 28 beneath the airborne flock �shooing the buzzard away from her chick in a whirl of snow 29 �dusk dusk— creeping fog darkens the estuary 30 �shroud of fog … mallards bob among the spongy islands 31 �the sun sets— shadows flutter under hovering wings 32 �dips below the horizon ripples of pink in its wake 33 �twilight twilight— back to roost in the silver birch 34 �a V of shrubs alights a clump among 35 �gliding shuddering wing-tip stunned by the wire 36 �moonrise— a silhouette drifts along the inlet 37 �moonlight no-necked crane plumage folded one leg lifted off the sandbar 38 �raising it shaking it then tucking it in its breast 39 �washing in the pool long black legs—and more— long black legs 40 �sable throat vermilion crown glowing in the moonlight. 41 ��aknowledgment Thanks to author Dorothy Britton and photographer Tsuneo Hayashida whose elegant book, The Japanese Crane: Bird of Happiness (published by Kodansha International, New York, 1993), informed and inspired these poems. original publication date: 1996 43 ��One bug . . . One mouth . . . Snap! A Year in the Life of a Turtle �spring the swamp—it’s musty smell— airs in the crisp March wind 46 �alders the above curly- cry cues your of tailing mist 47 �absorbing the rain the quagmire sleeps . . . steeps in the morning sun 48 �between the cries of a black-crowned night heron— the sound of unseen birds 49 �* burning off the morning haze a sunbeam spots the tip of her nostrils 50 �beneath a layer of leaves in the pale light her plastron still 51 �the sun shifts she shifts—then dives into the water 52 �spring-green leaf-tips erase the sky 53 �* gilded yellow bars— also gleaming in twilit waters a male’s eyes 54 �locking forelegs and necks the pair counter-clockwise 55 �silent night— stars swim a black and blue ocean 56 �silence but for two shells grinding together in the dusk 57 �* afterwards what’s left of her tears— dark wet mud Turtles sometimes shed tears as they lay their eggs. 58 �tamping her nest she lumbers away— laden with dirt 59 �stalking down the slope she vanishes in your shadows . . . softly blowing bluestem 60 �one pink-white egg nestled in the earth . . . the moon 61 �* starless sky nosing the flask-shaped chamber— five flashes of white 62 �groping, missing— a black-masked hunter rakes the twilight 63 �fondling for a moment the morning sun— her barren nest 64 �carnage over tiny bits of sun-dried shells wind and weather-beaten 65 �* shrouded in fog a tiny dinosaur inches toward dawn 66 �across her nest’s sandy ridge dragging her spiked inch-long tail 67 �from broken shell to clump of bluestem . . . making a dash for it 68 �kerplunck— scurrying through the grass then plopping in the water 69 �* morning sun— dozing on a mat of reeds a baby snapper 70 �spinning orange and yellow through the sunny pool . . . little cooter, your spots 71 �on a tuft of moss near a flowering cranberry eggtooth intact . . . 72 �more strikes and afterwards . . . swirling pondweed 73 �* foraging the lagoon a hatchling choked by weeds 74 �the shadow moves the yearling . . . freezes 75 �under a pine and mounds of pine-needles— another mound 76 �one bug one mouth snap! 77 �* smack of a jaw slap of a tail . . . silence 78 �with whiplash speed plowing through the swamp lily pads stuck to his dome 79 �hunt over . . . a water lily 80 bobs in the waves �upside down caked with mud . . . a tortoise’s sun-bleached bones 81 �summer high and still on the milky horizon— summer clouds 82 �steamy morning lulling me to sleep—tree frogs— their rubbery croak 83 �the afternoon purrs stroked by soft summery light 84 �night falls— lying on a bed of leaves the moon 85 �* hot windless day even the song-sparrow’s nest is deserted 86 �a puff of cloud . . . its trailing edge in the quiescent sky 87 �the heron stands . . . bakes in the hard dry air 88 �circling the cove immense blue wings stir the stagnant ether 89 �* day in, day out— bull frogs and the echo of bull frogs 90 �night, dawn, noon, dusk . . . will they ever stop 91 �slapping them, grabbing them, swiping them out of my hair 92 �landing on a spear of rush bending the rush— your rattling wings 93 �autumn softly on a barely-detectable north wind 94 a whiff of autumn �lowering sun: a few red leaves blaze in the pale grass 95 �from blade to blade picking seeds from the toppled reedgrass 96 �clear blue sky warm winds crook the deeply-yellow flower heads 97 �* drizzly day: darts and wiggles in the waterweed 98 �a kingfisher’s call through the shallow rain— riverbed deserted 99 �no chirps no twitters just rain 100 �oncoming storm— thunderous ghosts patrol the horizon 101 �* thunder— in one haywire jolt the forest’s silhouette 102 �one bolt searing the landscape white 103 �thunderstorm over rainwater—its sound— seeping into the earth 104 �thunderheads occlude the sky at dawn, at dusk . . . the moon’s absent face 105 �* scorching a no-longer-summer landscape— summer heat 106 �hot restless wind— treading it with your fairy wings 107 �she cocks her head— algae wave in the sunny floodwater 108 �hot-purple bellies sinewy stems undulating in the heat 109 �* little water, no rain one by one exiting the marsh 110 �without its yellow flowers bladderwort—deflated— splattered with mud 111 � fingering the parched riverbed trickles . . . then rivulets . . . 112 �even as you screech your imminent silence 113 �* your mournful call crosses my mind this wet cold morning 114 �now after they’re gone . . . their ceaseless cries 115 �winging low over a field whose springtime bluets are gone 116 �frogs wait, birds wait, snakes wait . . . the season shifts 117 �winter pine needles laced with snow— between their clusters your departing V 118 �cold air sinks—the hollows a black network of bare elm 119 �roiling, tumbling, riding the winter wind— witch grass 120 �darker colder each day arcing lower 121 �* more than wind more than cold rustles through the stiffening reeds 122 �dusk— a lone Canada goose vanishes in the leatherleaf 123 �brown leaves shrivel— pock-marked fruit fail to ripen in the weak October sun 124 �not hawks but wind— the branchless saplings dead 125 �* mucky river and you—eyes closed tight— lodging among the roots 126 �her breath stops— the frozen moor covered with night 127 �winds howl snow mounts the wintry thicket . . . lifeless 128 �under ice, under mud deaf to the whistling winter birds 129 ��acknowledgement Thanks to David M. Carroll’s exquisitely delicate The Year of the Turtle (published by Camden House, Vermont, 1991) which informed and inspired these poems original publication date 1997 131 ��Saffron Wings �Soaring Courting Mating Egg-Laying Hatching (as larva) Pupating Emerging (as butterfly) Basking Nectaring Surviving (Weather, Predators, Humans) Migrating Roosting Overwintering 134 �p u g l g n I g i d i n g g a a z d g o i z w teeny alpine n 135 �no two! no five! 136 in the iris-colored clouds �big blue butterfly past my eyes and out to sea 137 �poof . . . your lacy path rockslide 138 over the vast mountainface �frisky lady around the cow across the ribgrass 139 �tippling with dew painted lady in the understory’s half-light 140 �monarch: spearing the sun as it sets on the pylons 141 �scarlet wings in the brewing storm 142 scuttle by the lek �after the chase arrested by a flower in the verdant gulch 143 �behind the shrubs at the field’s verge caught by the fiery sun 144 �balanced on a sunflower her wings—encased in his— grow quiet 145 �mating over she drops to the ground dark and soft with loam 146 �stinging nettle leaf . . . glued underneath her small pile of eggs 147 �curled beneath a bud her abdomen— caressed by the lowering sun 148 �swollen streambed: depositing her egg on its cavernous bank 149 �gravid nymph grasping a leaf with your claw-like toes 150 �surveying a stem of hairs its plump prickly body atop a creamy egg-case 151 �nibbling the blade chewing, excreting . . . 152 whorls of leaves �wandering instar on the highway’s dusky shoulder paused . . . 153 �o caterpillar . . . in your wake 154 a sump of leaves �windless day— dangling from a web a silver of bark 155 �monarch pupa . . . swaddled in green dotted with gold 156 �iridescent checker your prenatal profile etched evermore deeply . . . darkly . . . 157 �skiff of snow: on the barbed wire a pupa blows 158 �a monarch pupa cracks— tiny ichneumon wasps scramble into sunlight 159 � unfurling in a wings shaft gossamer of light 160 �waving long legs dragging itself through the widening split in the pre-dawn light 161 �from treelimb to violet little imago’s almost-somersault 162 �chestnut wings warming them in the morning sun 163 �high noon lime-green sulphurs mud-puddle in the canyon dust 164 �an arctic basks— wings tilted toward the salmon-pink sky 165 �the boy dozes . . . perched on his fly rod a red admiral 166 �horse-mint ripe . . . a din of silverspots in the noontime hush 167 �landing on a spear of rush bending the rush— your rattling wings 168 � satyr: your darts around the stand of Turk’s cap 169 �little snout beyond the jetty flanked by flowers 170 �gust of wind— a hairstreak tips on its maple leaf perch 171 �sliced by the squall wings litter the dirty sand 172 �rain bends the umbel . . . the fritillary below 173 �after the storm— jinking about the leeward flank of the dune 174 �hovering around the bloodroot— fresh billmark across her wing 175 �reeking of the sea facing the sea fat white grub in its beak 176 �eaglet ripping the soldier free from the asphalt 177 �spitting out the Queen the yellow bird’s shrill call 178 �ghostly wings an orange-black heap against the curb 179 �slipping on the scree her wings smeared my fingers powdery 180 �still drinking the phlox beneath my net . . . a swallowtail 181 �August moon overflowing the jar with its wire-mesh mouth 182 �softly scudding clouds . . . a gaggle of sightseers points at the roving flock 183 �from the prow of the ferry watching them spin ever faster over the bay 184 �flat pink sea: saffron wings flutter over the prawn boat 185 �cold snap: riding a tailwind a male skipper 186 �winter sun— pale wings flutter about the woodpile 187 �following the drift ice grazing the coast . . . pallid overwintering blue 188 �whirling with the tide in the shallow’s flattened stubble 189 �twilight . . . fast asleep in the silver birch 190 �snow melts . . . the fir tree sags from the sleeping flock 191 �behind the storm-window latticed with ice . . . dangling threadbare wings 192 �winter’s end: curled along the window’s ledge its brittle body 193 �under ice under snow a gracile wing original publication date 1998 194 ���Fifty Jigsawed Bones A Sea-Turtle’s Life �her earthly scent expelled by the surf nosing the sand tasting the red ploughed sand 198 �wild, skittish shedding the sea its alabaster light 199 �snout to sand along the beach pausing, her oval shadow 200 �breast-stroke slow among the tangled weeds her grunt above the backwash 201 �moonlight shears the rustling grass a lone raccoon its prowling shadow 202 �dome to earth, gut to sky wheeling overhead the seagull’s thighs 203 �afterwards in the hollow the whirr of stones the echo of slow water 204 �in the scrub above the waterline a skeleton 205 �bloated with eggs— her belly then his 206 �delicately the urn under her tail too close to the marked high tide 207 �shallow pit swollen with eggs this burgeoning Easter morning 208 �in shreds beneath the sky one hundred globes of soft white parchment 209 �silent night, silent sea she blinks, peers . . . her saucer silhouette 210 �turtle . . . moon . . . face to face at the water’s edge 211 �flying through shallows chased by waves steadily her paws 212 �just before its crash the wave’s well-defined rim 213 �beyond the lagoon clear skies, calm waters the little nest covered & hidden quietly bakes in the sun 214 �an embryo steeps in the dark wedged securely 215 �morning sunbeams flatback tracks hidden in the high water 216 �grazing the island hovering on a thin breeze the sound of an approaching oar 217 �first one, the pop! a few false starts igniting the clutch 218 �hot June night a spasm of squirming up the chamber’s flask-shaped neck 219 �tap tap scritch a bottle-cap body stretching, wiggling into dawn 220 �bop! a head keeyow! a gull phloop! into a seaweed patch 221 �thousands, by the light of the moon scampering toward the light of the moon 222 �now none now millions scurrying among the pebbles 223 �just after dusk the squiggly pack covered with flying sand 224 �caked with sand, clobbered with sea picked up, spun about the water’s doily-edge 225 �glare— not moon— the turtle stops 226 �pink sand lizard’s mouth wingbeat close behind 227 �snip snip a shadow severs beneath the ghostcrab 228 �clack, click-clack turtle’s tail drifts into the tide 229 �sprint, little turtle don’t stroke the water— let your flippers fly 230 �shadow above movement below— quick! 231 �whitecaps whirl, breakers build from their billowy faces dark little eyes 232 �snap gulp eyes ahead & steady 233 �a yearling sleeps the raft drifts sun beams down on the August pasturage 234 �rocked by wind, rolled by current in your sargassum cradle foreflippers tucked 235 �splop! up for air a baby crab, a water strider whoosh . . . the wave recedes 236 �scree! scree! from the bushy raft gull plucks her dozing dinner 237 �the smell of water dark coral cave old turtle sleeps through the sunny day 238 �under a ledge, under a pipe scraping, scratching her faraway expression 239 �brown & crested tiny dinosaur still sunning 240 �on the bottom sand nudged beneath a rock green turtle’s sea-washed shell 241 �one female, one male as they mate the other seven 242 �scraping, thrashing two shells submerged— their mutual gasps for air 243 �his grappling nails her deeply-notched scars after dark in the unstable mud 244 �shell gouged, shoulders slashed she drags her body away from the bull 245 �washed up - dead flippers tied . . . the slow boat back her bloody, sliver-moon eyes 246 �sewage & petrol their shifting film inching up her parched caged body 247 �swaying in the sky strummed by the breeze her flat gonglike belly 248 �dawn: scooping out blood forcing the ladle down into the beast original publication date: 1999 249 ��LINES The Life of a Laysan Albatross �lord of the air “the goonies are here!” “the goonies have come back!” squawking, squabbling their drowsy hum from the bush 252 �on lime-green flats little water-spout tracks 253 �the pelagic bird stops through roaring troughs her hulking shadow 254 �dusting clouds slender waves tacking through the spindrift 255 �>> two nests too close their killing stare 256 �settling on the egg talking to the egg shhh . . . listen . . . 257 �pssstt . . . the babe turns slowly . . . slowly . . . crack! 258 �matted fuzz, spiky fluff kicking away the blunt shell end 259 �>> a newborn sleeps, a father stirs on the atoll’s floor gossamer prints 260 �open bill on open bill crosswise 261 �coaxing its face forward pointing, peeping scooping its tail toward his chick-pouch 262 �folding wings straightening feathers his long gaze at the sky 263 �>> on flight-stiff legs her beeline toward the fledgling 264 �gulping, guzzling wiping its beak in the sand 265 �chick pauses to swallow dangling from its mouth mucousy strings of goo 266 �the still-small bird away from its nest— its expression seeing father 267 �monarch of the ocean skies >> silent tide, silent sea crest to crest her graceful arc 268 �rocketing higher gliding right up the wind shrinking to a pinpoint 269 �her flight line dips now vast, now toward starlit moonless water 270 �surfing the air its rushing edge— the long bones of her wings 271 �>> tropical Kuroshio, frigid Oyashio hush! do you hear the fishing grounds? 272 �birds scatter, birds drown catching squid in a vicious typhoon 273 �one breaker’s spray the spume of the next cold northwest blast 274 � after dark down as the ocean swells & forward up & away like a storm-driven snowflake 275 �>> head tucked, feathers flat on the sea’s slick skin a watertight bird 276 �look! loligos! small alive! fresh! 277 �one dying saury one dead squid in the dusk’s sloe light impaling them on her bill 278 �following a breeze its wafting scent of pup-filled sharks 279 �ruler of the sun >> heels rooted, toes raised in the undulating air a youngster pants 280 �hugging the trees’ broad strips of shade hundreds face away from the glare 281 �one thin reed one still fowl in its sun-spotted shadow 282 �neither stirring nor breathing hauled to the incinerator 283 �>> circling oops! the lagoon’s greenish water 284 �breast to ground reeling forward . . . a little too fast 285 �churling birds, whirling sand the grizzled sea a white-capped chop 286 �over aerofoil wings—its gentle lift savoring the glow in the bow waves 287 �rider on the wind >> “hey!” but the youth quickly departs 288 �dive-bombing, blanketing him with droppings “you can’t come here!” “you can’t come here!” 289 �a truck driver honks climbs down from his cab the juvenile’s gawky stare 290 �shady lawn skidding rear the smashed-bird’s face 291 �>> he, still she notices will she stay? 292 �drawing himself up he remains rooted— she tosses a twig aside 293 �“moo” clacks the bird croaking, whistling shaking his feathers into place 294 �regaining her balance settling her wings as they shriek, fight, stumble over one another 295 �>> erect, a skyward victory scream after a nap in the rare spring sun 296 �throwing grass he bows to the ground “eh…eh… eh…eh” he murmurs 297 �she sits he sits nearby gently nibbling her neck feathers 298 �caressing his bill she raises one wing— the male’s rapt look 299 �>> two birds touch, lower to the ground through nubile limbs their dappled bodies 300 �she watches quietly the tip of her beak on his expanded breast 301 �water ebbs surges on the sand the rising moon’s flickering shadows 302 �morning sun in its chiseled lace turtle’s mottled shell original publication date 2002 303 �Five Haiku Narratives was set in optima, a humanist-inspired, sans-serif typeface designed by hermann zapf (1918-2015). illustrations from the first limited editions: lory paulson. cover design: bryan kring. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Five haiku narratives Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. 5 haiku narratives Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2015 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780985884352 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_057 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Like a Crane at Night One Bug... One Mouth... Snap! Saffron Wings Fifty Jigsawed Bones Lines: the Life of LaySan Albatross Extent The size or duration of the resource. 319 p Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng Haiku poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/7e9afd4597da6d4c1e590353fc54341c.pdf 083832f965f37b421447f3fd83461db5 PDF Text Text Figures in Blue �also by gail sher PROSE Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 POETRY Figures in Blue • 2012 The Bardo Books • 2011 White Bird • 2010 Mother’s Warm Breath • 2010 The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities • 2009 though actually it is the same earth • 2008 The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1996 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �Figures in Blue Gail Sher night crane press 2012 �Copyright 2012, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978-0-9858843-0-7 �For Brendan ��contents Daffodils 1 Eagle 5 Spring 9 Juke Box 13 Fuzz 17 Sprig of Laurel 21 Tulip 25 Tree 29 Thumb 33 Black 37 Cow 41 Meadow 45 ��DAFFODILS A woman alone at a large open window gazes at the sky. The soft flesh of her arm folds around a basket. If she is dead, the colors may be alive. Her soft flesh holds a premonition of her, calls its form within the form of its space in sky. She is miming sky with her body. Taming its color, like a double her of color. There is a sense of intense activity in the buildings and neighborhood, so familiar, yet her skin is not that. 1 �Angst from the street, but what prevails is the face of a person waiting. An agony of light chugs through her body. If she could roll out her body, like make a road of her body, there is the sense of that being all there is. As if her flesh were a habit, a woman stands in sky, catching it in the drape of her dress. 2 �As she rests in the bare window she is dead. I (am dead) she says. It stands like a point of view. A strip of death is on the woman’s arm. She wants the death eagerly, like time tucked in her arm. On the crest you can just touch death, she feels. She sees an arm (the boundless ordinary nature of her arm) in a gown, in the sky, wrapped in a column of the unsaid. 3 �Sky like sea, around a woman hugged by sea. A man is a response (like sky and a sea wall). The float of him sinks, then appears on the horizon. I am exempt from sky if I empty myself toward it. The flaccid man’s ribs absorb the thick musculature of her arm. Daffodils range, placated by time, but it is the habit of deep slumber. 4 �EAGLE An old man sits, quiet like a log. His knees are crossed. Somehow he is stalling, unplaced, like the woods of his head. If he sees age, it is good age he feels. As if time happens twice in the crux of his body. But it waits. The spine of an animal coils in air as it dangles from a limb, sun stroking it nervously. 5 �The man sees blue in a bulbous core of light. His outline bobs just outside his body. There are animals in his body (the knowing of what locomotes the folds of a man’s body). Sun spalls time. Something is heard but he is dead. Giddy describes the animal climbing out of his eyes. As the animal creeps away, a rising eagle empties (gathers slowly) into his body. 6 �The eventual empty sky or incremental bardos of sky, as if sky is one continuous living membrane. The ridge of the eagle’s motility in my mind dwarfs its vanishing in clouds. I think I see the contour of its movement (the bird’s flying outside the possibilities of its body). It leans into the land, then drains into sky. As if a boundary included in its disappearance also imprints the bird, sky and the part of sky that’s thought. 7 �I dream myself to being the majesty of a body, a sphere with an eye as in the self-view of a mental body. I dream myself to a shape that looks like a fresh smell. The sloppiness of birth, if I seek its tail in the crack of myself, whose poison, excrescence, great gelatinous spookiness hang like an old breast on the person. The androgynous bearing of a breast, sagging in day like a normal breast, the normal day of no-day, as if she were a fog leaning over and asking a question. 8 �SPRING A child peers from the spines of a sapling, tender like soft eyes. A knuckle propping her cheek seems stiff, awkwardly awake in a dark rivet of sun. Now is between joining what is present to one. Light on the blue wall is making the child public, though she is alone, miscible, her feet are alone. To replay time, like a child’s favorite story, has the same soothing sense (her being a rabbit) again. 9 �The foreclosure of a life being locked into this sky, this orb of seasons and death, such as the spring of sky. If a baby walks in sky, she too is an example of how containers simply amplify karmic structure. Pink flesh makes a covenant. An eye is silk and slips out. The play of a person’s face, in perfect precision with her, drifts in sky like a boat. 10 �Like she might trip over her body wandering through a scarlet field. If the container formulates from inside, slippage becomes hostile. Spring touches the nonlocation of her ground, the pace of her mind as a shield. There is a string around a mind still situated in her body though no longer biologically seated in her body. Many insects collect there. It is a grieving ground. 11 �Sometimes the sky looks like ducks and I remember floating on an arrow toward a city. Like time in a foot where sky is the foot. A thinking person’s thoughts die in little clumps. So the impact of the arrow, the brain of the arrow. When it dies its bones and tongue smell of spring as if spring were something made in its body and later revealed by its body. 12 �JUKE BOX A woman in her doorway looks up. She raises her hand to her hat as her head tilts back. Summer is high. The image of sun fusing with her body such that she becomes the sun, its place in sky resting back toward herself watching. Her feet are bare in high-heeled shoes. Soft folds of her dress stir in a slight breeze. The description is a protection, a barrier placed as a scene. There is tension between herself and the scene. The brim of her hat dips. Its motion is time. There is tension between the time of her hat’s dipping and the time of the sun streaming through sky, creating decrepitation in her body. 13 �The woman is loose. Her bones move as she rests back on her lungs. The woman breathes in conjunction with her lungs as if everything in her world were contained within a bagpipe. Her body no longer shields her, she feels. She lowers her arm and brushes its skin to remove the tension that has resulted. It is a thick body, like tea leaves or lamb. A body like sweet fruit. She leans against a piano. Her body is not a pianist’s though. 14 �A woman hungering for her body moves along the edges of her body. She moves it to her heart, toward the belly of its hair. The chaos in a hair, a flank of hair, but the true flank refuses to spread farther than its own body. Sound cuts space bleeding in her bones, tourniquets of sound in her hemline. Being the grandmother of her sound, the great great grandmother of her highest lightest sound, like an unsound, sound with a backbone. 15 �A moth spreads funerary wings across a fragment of sky. I see her skin (the sound in skin) hovering in its body. Dusk over grass lights a spot on the moth’s wing. There is a dance in her, but she will not know it. She looks away because she sees this. A juke box dissolves, calms into a shuffle, a slow dance of days in which she can be ready. 16 �FUZZ If you look you see a little fuzz of hair above the head and neck of a blonde woman. She appears to be standing, waiting in a stall, reading a magazine. Her headband clears a space that she inhabits if I think of her. What is the real face? The photograph of someone living, but it is a paper face, double non-living. Is how we wait for our mind to know what we are, the fragrance of a number gone. 17 �I want to cry when I see her hair, stiff with an idea of a place she might take up. Her skirt is loosely feral. Gravity is a lesion on her. Her laugh I infer from the hair. I live in my hair, she says to you casually, like a caucus of hair opprobriously abusing its own hair. She will relax and be her hair, the spine of each hair. Little hairs on your forearm. 18 �Sky gathers around her hair. She lifts her hand. Sky crawls under her hand as if it recognizes its mother. Her hand is and always will be the life inside a hand. The belly of the hand is in the woman’s eyes. Time is umbilical, as if her hand suddenly defines my amount, more accurately than my amount. A cop’s black leather hand pushes back night because he knows he can. (He is a shepherd of fire.) 19 �She passes herself (and her periphery) walking down as if down were handcuffing her. All arrows point down. Night abides making space for its light because night recognizes its same light family. There is a robbery. The lapse of a person (the mulling of its eye) whirring in air a few centimeters off. Night rubs night so that death can carry the sky to the people. 20 �SPRIG OF LAUREL A woman’s full body in the folds of her soft full body may be a portrait of death. She is looking at sky, loosely alive. The painter paints light so that its breath is exposed in the folds of her t-shirt against her shoulder. Her hair is loose, pushed back behind her hand. It bends in like a child. May I loosely let go of her emaciated hand, like a turkey in flight hangs in sky, loosely falling away from its flying. 21 �That the painter requires a sprig confuses her. He sticks the sprig into her hand. The gnarled causes of a hand are beginningless, she’s thinking. Air seeks the awareness of her, making a thin film between life. Soft desolation keeps churning against a wall. If I carry my shell up, the image of a bird. Hell is a bird which flickers in and out of being married like that. The room exists partially to mimic a bird flowing, but it leaves a bad color. 22 �The wait of a woman at the edge of air, sweetly like a wing, swift and awake, so as to sweep the air close in. An image of her heart is showing on its face, which turns inside out so that the heart is holding the face. She smiles the smile of the face as it has appeared both during its growing and later during its samadhi. Even angels have faces in her, she feels. Until is the memory of one—until-when grasses—or how-long grasses is her own memory of one. 23 �Is there, without the girl, a girl holding a sprig? (I’m wondering if she is simply an old longing.) Like if you die but you don’t, does your feeling for the girl disappear? If air dies but the girl is living, what happens to my feeling if she is Vajrapani? I offer light and smoke to an unassailable space, an aphasia of space, like a belt of space. 24 �TULIP A woman sits facing light. Sun hits her hands resting on a flowered dress. A long row of windows stand in the dawn quietly. So that we too (that’s our mind). She is not existing in sitting’s aspect. We don’t see her eyes. We infer that she is reading from the texture of her skin. As if her skin is reading. To which her body, she feels, is surrogate. The space is there but not available, which the act of reading addresses. 25 �The resonance of a reader’s mind coagulates in her earth sign. Earth is time, then making a little bowl of it for her head. As if time were skin, like a family of her body, I want the boy erect, she says. I want him like a card as its colors fold around it. She sees the color of the dead one so that she could be dead again. Autumn is the frame. Red leaves, violet sky, like a chop signing him off. 26 �Sometimes I hear her death, like lip from behind a word. Words are a prick, prick, prick, thin as air, but some say. No! She’s round like a ball. The word is alive. I speak it by touch. My eyes bulge and my mouth puckers, but I am dead first, she is saying. The lip moves sleepily. In sticky summer like a heavy foot. See, it’s wandering through a vibrant field of flowers! No one arrives, which has the pleasant feeling of continuous sky. 27 �A moth breaks off sky. It spins around then lands on a blue wall. A marking on its wing trails through its fur. Wind through a hill because of the hill holding a place for it, is how it can be that. Its feathers are broken. Whose long arc of pastness, like the wings of a crane fanning out in space. Death is imposed on blowing branches against a wall, like nearness and life, beauty and wilting tulips. 28 �TREE A girl lolls on grass in a tutu. The blue ruffle of a violet is the same as sky, she’s thinking. (Blue is not a location but a warmth of pressure around an object.) Gathering rain presses against sky, then falls in squares mirroring the farmland. Tonally it is dark. The musicality of a land (almost neon in the palm) plays a doubly dark magnetic field. The thought of sky, dispersing itself to its own full origin, may be death in its still quiet flush. 29 �I am older from sky, such as a waltz dovetailing sky. A guardian of sky sprinkles saffron across her body. Appearance quells in patterns against light, the curve of her hip, then flaring and draping over something we can’t see. If she could rest in sky, but she is aggravated. A tuft of cotton sticks out from an ear. A fundament of time is exactly a cigarette, the vagaries of a thumb suddenly weak and drifting. 30 �The dissepiment may be a tree. Roots are bones, bone to bone in strange woolly clusters. The corpse is alive though. Its tongue is its mind as soon as it wakes up. Mountains of sad trees but one tree lays its limbs out wide, direction carpeled to a simple fruit. A caravan of heads, rolls and rolls of swaddled heads, fades into a bluebird’s call. 31 �Rain through sky, through the greenery of sky. Fire and rain create a pocket. You are dead. Something in the pocket reaches for you. The spirit just sticks its hand into your body. Then he gives it back. A golden carp of golden bones escapes you, it says. The ache of a tree, like an arabesque of bones, sheds its trace imperceptibly. 32 �THUMB A woman partially hidden by a wall stands in midday light. She is a rounded person with soft brown skin. A curl falls on her forehead. The fullness of the setting demands a potential connected object so that the image of her doesn’t fragment. A second woman seated facing away eludes space by an unseen motion, the peep of her hat, the beauty of thin leaves layering sky onto the woman standing. Wings of sky make flowers that look like birds, a spire of delicacy inside the person. 33 �The view of a partially hidden woman is absolutely alive. Someone is jealous. A man shuffles by if he is alone. How light hits air is how the weight of her appearance, a tulip feathering out, a painter paints that, the feather-weight of appearance carried by a woman’s body. A town of women grow in light. If she’s free. (A dab of blue is not freedom though.) The man wears blue but he has not achieved the purity of blue. What is not blue’s purity is like another person. 34 �I am watching sky and a dark man watching sky. The time of this sky is the non-time of looking. A vast amount of sky may take place inside his belly. If he sneezes it is there like his own twin body. Part of sky is a clear line of intensity but part scatters like sun over a pool. In the lordosis of sky the pulse of his blazing white undershirt refracts such that light stops behind itself inside his belly button. 35 �A person waits. A brown bare body holds the tension of waiting. Nothing moves except (slightly) his thumb resting on the waist of his jeans. The excursion is in the neck, like sky along his neck. As how the eyes of a bird to a person from a distance form an intimacy one can’t touch. I make pleasant. If he waits for the portion he will ultimately be, like shine in a deep pool or wind in a rabbit’s eyes. I place my heart in some wishbone there. The wishbone pops like time in the dead man. 36 �BLACK A humpback wearing red fishes in black water. He leans against a tree if it is angled in a cloudless morning. A bird flies out. Pierced hair slithers onto its wing. I am startled by the parity of a simple action by a simple person relatively relaxed, covered by time. The size of time works through day, like fish breathing mud, squirming against day’s barriers. 37 �Perhaps the artist, as an effigy of death, makes the bird to avoid or ward death off. The bird could be suicide (or way of performing a natural process). Since the wakening of the bird, correlates (empty of the bird) may look like a higher stage of bird. Mountains and rivers are faces with hollow eyes. Stilettos in air hang prettily from blue satin. Clouds are like a string of pearls where one pearl is black and that’s why they’re all there. 38 �A cloud in the shape of a bird hangs low in evening sky. Its shadow forms a hump. The cloud could be a door swiveling in space, a spark of lavender in grass, only it is black. If black peers from the death of me, I may lose track of its trajectory, confusing it with life, thinking it is my life. A nerve of sky pierces my side so I walk with a limp, which reminds me of a mountain’s breast. 39 �A painter paints a mountain, shedding the mountain. (Black replaces black in the subtle crevice between himself and what he discards.) If he is where someone lives then. We place ribbons on our mountain and let its water fall out. You can kill a mountain by shutting your eyes or looking at the mountain thinking of your dead mother. No color rises. Orange turns to sand in a country without flowers. 40 �COW If you throw some earth on a table, the figures in the earth, what is there to be derived, from air, from a spell, like a flavor. There is a geomancy there, taken from the harbor. Immanence in eating, what stands in front of it, so that when something happens, it has already happened also. Also is time. An eater places that against a numerology of color, like the brown wall of the room, which is neither earth nor his dark hand. 41 �The thought in a wrist and each bare lobe of hand. Yellow is crucial in the gentle unfolding of its earth element. Hunger is the border, divination the table, a context clean of all past expression. I am born each minute that the man eats bread. I place a palm against his brow. My mind is what he digests. If I think of the person, yellow almost becomes the person because my mind and the thing don’t separate. 42 �An eating man’s neck, free of all justification in him, is a portrait of time swallowing a neck. Electrical swallowing speaks the ache of time in his chewing. I’m reminded of a dog, knocking over cans, scarfing. A neck is a mental neck and the throat swallowing death thinks that it is still lunching. A petunia taking birth near a cow means that the teller (time) will definitely complete the yugas, it rambles. 43 �A cow wearing red is gliding toward rebirth. Its mind is a plum that it sucks while they tear up its body. He draws the cow down into his body so it can rest and finally sleep within his body. Like if snow were food, the sense of miles and miles of snow. Still, the person’s throat has not even a particle of snow in it. If snow were crafted in earth with it in mind instead of sourcing it from sky (like the pair of lovers floating in sky with death in mind). 44 �MEADOW A face in the light of you, which is dusk or early morning. Wind in hay and the tall anchoring of a blanket, as if her hair were the blanket. A cat bays in the moon whose face appears in the light of you. Dew is thick. The loosening of its weight holds an even placement of view. Arms and hair curve like grass in the exact amount of their sleeves. 45 �Acres of red born in the same sky. A man watches light stretch and thin across the hay bundles. To comb a flame, his face against her hair. Aghast is what abides beyond the scope of shape. Shape is space in its aspect of brilliance, her face through shifting breeze brushing hair over shadows. The waist of a scene expands beyond its boundaries so that meadow convexes anterior to sky, like a bulge in sky, as if it were dead. 46 �The eye of the painter focusing on a meadow is how my mind wants the space of its real dead body. They want it to be kinship, we two together, but in fact it is a splurge of shape (the potential shape of sky). Someone paints night, space consecutive with darkness, as if one space is more dead. Death is space whose appearance results from space, unbridled in the soft of low, emergent face on stone. 47 �Night releases to I as an object. A winterland of limbs. (The winter of her body is this very body dead.) As if sky were alone a century beforehand. The sound, heavy through night, retains its weight in light. I locate you back to the outreaches of sky. Low slow land is a transparency in her body. Prehistoric quiet covers up day like a sheet. 48 ��Figures in Blue is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. ������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figures in blue Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2012 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780985884307 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_010 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Daffodils Eagle Spring Juke Box Fuzz Sprig of Laurel Tulip Tree Thumb Black Cow Meadow Extent The size or duration of the resource. 64 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/a305545b3e8e6099efa4d2fc3fd545f6.pdf 4ff583e3569892e8c13072ec1219e659 PDF Text Text Fifty Jigsawed Bones �A Sea-Turtle's Life Gail Sher �contents her earthly scent ........ l beyond the lagoon . .. ... 18 a yearling sleeps ....... 39 the smell of water ...... 44 dead ...... 53 washed up - �her earthly scent �expelled by the surf nosing the sand tasting the red ploughed sand 2 �wild. skittish shedding the sea its alabaster light 3 �snout to sand along the beach pausing, her oval shadow 4 �breast-stroke slow among the tangled weeds her grunt above the backwash 5 �moonlight shears the rustling grass a lone raccoon its prowling shadow 6 �dome to earth, gut to sky wheeling overhead the seagull's thighs 7 �afterwards in the hollow the whirr of stones the echo of slow water 8 �in the scrub above the waterline a skeleton 9 �bloated with eggs her belly then his 10 �delicately the urn under her tail too close to the marked high tide �shallow pit swollen with eggs this burgeoning Easter morning 12 �in shreds beneath the sky one hundred globes of soft white parchment 13 �silent night. silent sea she blinks, peers ... her saucer silhouette �turtle ... moon . . . face to face at the water's edge 15 �flying through shallows chased by waves steadily her paws 16 �just before its crash the wave·s well- defined rim 17 �beyond the lagoon �clear skies. calm waters the little nest covered & hidden quietly bakes in the sun 19 �an embryo steeps in the dark wedged securely 20 �morning sunbeams flatback tracks hidden in the high water 21 �grazing the island hovering on a thin breeze the sound of an approaching oar 22 �first one. then pop! a few false starts igniting the clutch 23 �hot June night a spasm of squirming up the chamber's flask-shaped 24 neck �tap tap scritch a bottle-cap body stretching, wiggling into dawn 25 �bop! a head keeyow! a gull phloop! into a seaweed patch 26 �thousands. by the light of the moon scampering toward the light of the moon 27 �now none now millions scurrying among the pebbles 28 �just after dusk the squiggly pack covered with flying sand 29 �caked with sand. clobbered with sea picked up. spun about the water's doily-edge 30 �glare not moon the turtle stops ]I �pink sand lizard's mouth wingbeat close behind 32 �snip snip a shadow severs beneath the ghostcrab 33 �clack, click-clack turtle's tail drifts into the tide 34 �sprint, little turtle don't stroke the water let your flippers fly 35 �shadow above movement below - quick! 36 �whitecaps whirl, breakers build from their billowy faces dark little eyes 37 �snap gulp eyes ahead & steady 38 �a yearling sleeps �the raft drifts sun beams down on the August pasturage 40 �rocked by wind. rolled by current in your sargassum cradle foreflippers tucked 41 �splop! up for air a baby crab, a water strider whoosh ... the wave recedes 42 �scree! scree! from the bushy raft gull plucks her dozing dinner 43 �the smell of water �dark coral cave old turtle sleeps through the sunny day 45 �under a ledge, under a pipe scraping, scratching her faraway expression �brown & crested tin y dinosaur still sunning 47 �on the bottom sand nudged beneath a rock green turtle's sea-washed shell �one female. one male as they mate the other seven 49 �scraping. thrashing two shells submerged their mutual gasps for air 50 �his grappling nails her deeply-notched scars after dark in the unstable mud 51 �shell gouged. shoulders slashed she drags her body away from the bull 52 �washed up - dead �flippers tied ... the slow boat back her bloody, sliver-moon 54 eyes �sewage & petrol their shifting film inching up her parched caged body 55 �swaying in the sky strummed by the breeze her flat gonglike belly 56 �dawn: scooping out blood forcing the ladle down into the beast 57 �Published by Night Crane Press c/o Gail Sher 1500 Park Avenue Suite 435 Emeryville CA 94608 © 2001 Gail Sher Design and illustrations by Lory Poulson and Susan Gluck � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fifty jigsawed bones Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. A sea-turtle's life Subject The topic of the resource Turtles -- Poetry Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2001 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_009 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. her earthly scent beyond the lagoon a yearling sleeps the smell of water washed up- dead Extent The size or duration of the resource. 61 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications Turtles https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/1a1acf2687d67372ac779cc3b4bed3d4.pdf c2d111c80eb3a51ff987bb1131e69be6 PDF Text Text Ezekiel “When I found Gail Sher’s books, I imagined her having stepped from a Japanese Noh play. Her poems, sharpened by rigorous Buddhist discipline … were tough, refreshingly hard-edged, full of the natural world—constructed of bits and pieces of mineral, insect, bark, summer grass…. They showed a sensibility that was refined, educated, attentive to natural detail, & enamored of the chipped, the asymmetric, the rustic. They put me in mind of the writers of Japan’s Heian court, the best of whom were women. I still hear echoes of Murasaki Shikibu or Ono no Komachi when I open Gail’s books.” Ezekiel — Andrew Schelling, Faculty, MFA program in Writing & Poetics, Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado FPO PLACE BARCODE HERE Gail Sher Gail Sher is the author of One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers (Penguin), the first of a widely-praised series of books on writing as a practice. She has authored over twenty books of poetry, six book-length haiku sequences, and a critically acclaimed book on bread-making (From a Baker’s Kitchen) based on her years of experience as the head baker at the San Francisco Zen Center’s Tassajara Bread Bakery. Her writing has appeared in over twenty literary journals, and her haiku have won awards both in the United States and Japan. She lives and works as a writer, psychotherapist and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. For detailed information about her, visit gailsher.com. Gail Sher �Ezekiel �Also by Gail Sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry Sunny Day, Spring • 2014 Mingling the Threefold Sky • 2013 The Twelve Nidānas • 2012 Figures in Blue • 2012 The Bardo Books • 2011 White Bird • 2010 Mother’s Warm Breath • 2010 The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities • 2009 though actually it is the same earth • 2008 The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1996 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �Ezekiel Gail Sher Night Crane Press 2015 �Copyright 2015 Gail Sher All rights reserved Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permisssion from the copyright owner and publisher. ISBN: 978-0-9858843-4-5 �for Brendan ��CONTENTS White Dew, Summer Ends 1 Three Evening Bells 17 The Sound of White 39 The Deepest Blue of Sky 59 ��White Dew, Summer Ends ��Chin to knee, shoulders hunched, ezekiel sat in a spot of morning sun. With the instinct of a cat she had picked that spot, spread out a towel, and chin tucked perfectly in the little niche of her right knee, looked to be admiring her toes. Her toes were long. They came straight out of her feet and evenly spanned the whole width of her metatarsus. But her feet, she knew, felt unwelcomed in her body. 3 �° ‘What lovely feet you have!’ The girl had taken off her shoes. The instep was high. The line from her big toe mound all the way to her ankle, to Ezekiel’s eye, looked perfect. ‘Oh that.’ She saw the girl shudder. Ezekiel had felt a darkness in her escape and pass into her. The memory returned now. Ezekiel was alone. By the light of a skinny moon she was watching a woman’s shift sway back and forth on a clothesline. A shallow breeze would inflate it. “It looks happy,” she thought, watching it bloom quietly. 4 �° Probably it was the unusually hot weather that had made the child dress so scantily. She had slung herself on a bench outside an ice cream parlor. An older man was also on the bench. Ezekiel could tell—by his studied respectful distance and by a certain casual tension in his body—that he was charmed by her. The girl was just a kid. Her rolled up shorts and pony tail were simply what she had when she’d left the house. Yet her very long legs—so long that they hardly fit under the bench (she had to screw them up awkwardly)—and her lean, sylphlike body that the pony tail somehow sexified for him. He was eating ice cream which gave him something to do. Was the girl eating ice cream? No. She was sitting in the sun waiting for a friend. 5 �Her tortoise shell barrette gleamed in the noonish light. Getting her legs under the bench—it was the turnout—that was what Ezekiel right away had noticed. I should have been her. The girl, she saw, was very aware of her body. But Ezekiel had never liked pony tails. 6 �° It was her skinniness, the sharp line of the girl. Her soul was like a tree. Her limbs, though thin, were strong and knobby. And flexible. Like a rubber band. She wouldn’t eat. Her not-eating had come from god, she felt. Thus her thinness had always been redoubtable. 7 �“so it’s summer again.” Ezekiel examined the light. The longest day of the year had always held for her a certain charm. Sparrows were cheeping on the hill outside her room as she was considering what to wear. They’d been even louder the day before. A whole group of them had been jumping and incessantly calling. Today, however, the nervousness that she’d noted was gone. Some other birds joining them were quieter and less given to jumping. The glow of their wings and the fresh color of their breasts made them seem new to the year. By comparison the sparrows looked old and used up. 8 �° “Those are very pretty roses,” Ezekiel said, pointing to some yellow ones. She’d been wandering through a flea market. Actually she wasn’t feeling very well. She waited while the vendor finished with someone else. Her mind was on the girl, the image of her in her short shorts and flats. “Madelaine,” someone called. A rather large mutt with a very pink nose perked up its ears. It had been lying, chin to cement, paws splayed awkwardly. While the animal had very long toes and beautiful, pristine toenails, its rear ankles were wrapped in manes as if they were a lion’s. “Madelaine,” someone called again. The dog roused itself and wandered over to a dirty SUV. 9 �° ‘Flare you toes!’ The voice had been imperious. And Ezekiel had lacked the ability. ‘I can’t,’ she’d finally said. ‘Can’t,’ he mimicked, then turned again to the class. From her futon she was looking at the roses and curling her toes by the light of them. “At least they work,” she muttered, flexing and flaring them wide. It had been a rainy day. The sun, as the class ended, was rising on yellow roses. “It’s good to exercise your toes,” she parroted. Supporting her foot she allowed her toes to yawn. When her mind wandered, they tightened like a monkey’s. 10 �° Rose. That was her name. The startled expression in those eyes. If she touched her face, her face receded further behind her eyes. ‘She protrudes into sky like a cat,’ averred her mother. Ezekiel put her hands in her pockets leveraging a shrug by pressing them down deep. ‘She steals from you, mama. You should fire her. Why don’t you fire her?’ ‘Oh I don’t know, honey.’ 11 �° ‘It’s in here. I put it in before I left.’ ‘Take you time,’ the salesgirl said, watching the woman rifle through her bag. From a little ways away Ezekiel saw that her mother had stolen something. She opened her eyes and looked at her hands. One still held her toe while the other fiddled with the clippers. “You have nice hands,” someone once commented. Ezekiel could smell the dark blue serge of her long stylish skirt. The uniform that she had worn at school was of a similar serge but the smell was evoked by the stolen one that her mother, as soon as they got home, urged her to try on. ‘It looks pretty on you, honey.’ ‘I don’t need a skirt.’ ‘It may need shortening. You’ll change your mind.’ ‘No I won’t.’ 12 �° ‘Your mother is beautiful, isn’t she?’ He was following her with his eyes. The day was gone. As she looked, the sky had turned a very sweet wine color. ‘What knocks about the sky . . . ’ Seeing the light uncoupled from her . . . the bonelessness of her blousy body. The thinness of her fat, dowdy like a slut. 13 �° ‘Come with me.’ Someone had appropriated her arm. It was a policeman and he was leading her back to the store. He didn’t say anything, but as he steered her, he was holding her arm firmly. ‘What’s in your pack?’ ‘Open it please. Put everything here.’ He waited while she’d clumsily loosened the drawstring. ‘Have you done this before?’ He asked this as he was looking up her history. ‘No,’ she lied. Apparently he hadn’t found what he’d expected. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said, leaving the room. It was a dingy office smelling of cigarettes. After a very long time he returned. ‘Since this is your first offence, I’m only going to give you a warning,’ he said a little more gently. 14 �Ezekiel was sobbing. All the food she had stolen was still laid out on the desk. ‘You’re free to go now.’ The officer waited. ‘Next time you’ll go to jail.’ 15 ��Three Evening Bells ��So it’s autumn,” ezekiel mused, detecting in “ the air a familiar crispness. The night was young and she didn’t feel like going home. For awhile she just walked, taking in the evening. ‘I want to be with sky. I’m going to sky. There is a time for sky in people,’ she exuded. The sounds of day, the shouts of kids at once filled her and at the same time left her with an absolute sense of nothing. 19 �° ‘Look at that wrist! Just look at it!’ Her mother, barging into her room, had grabbed her wrist and was shaking it. Ezekiel had been reading. She herself didn’t see anything wrong with her wrist. Actually, she liked her wrist. She’d been purposely not eating to make her wrist exactly that way. Ezekiel simply sat. She was trying to picture the wrist her mother had so disliked. The memory returned now. She was in a car amidst lanes of stalled out cars. A rabbit was stuffed in the rear window of the sedan just ahead of her. It lay on its side. One pink ear flopped back awkwardly. The animal seemed content riding along with no one to bother it. ‘I bet it’s rocking inside its head.’ She peered into the Ford. There was some junk in the back seat. She pictured the mother, harassed, yelling, hurling it anywhere to get it out of the way. 20 �° Stop her! Just stop her! I’m going to kill her if she doesn’t stop. “It’s an accident.” Two or three bikes had been pulled off the road. The lane to her left was starting to clear up, however. Her mother was screaming and her father didn’t know what to do. I’m an accident! I’m an accident! The car with the rabbit darted to the side and vanished in a throng of suddenly-relieved cars. 21 �the cans in the window were laughing. Pointing their fingers and smirking. One had hair, its smile sinister. ‘We have calories. Calories will make you FAAAAAAAT FAAAAAAAT FAAAAAAAAAAAT.’ Ezekiel woke. It was raining. Big drops landed with a thud. 22 �° “Zeki-san! Did I wake you?” “He’s too tall for his body,” she flashed. “I was just resting.” She had on leggings, an old practice sweater and sagging hand-knit socks. “Her hair is young,” observed the visitor. “Its rich dark depth has the snap of a young girl.” Luciano was not youthful. That is he did not appear to be youthful. Rather than youthful he seemed untouched. Innocent in a pure, clear way. His intelligence hid it however. And his thinness. Sensing the fib he stuck out his hand. “This is for Unn. It’s a recording from Kyoto of New Year’s temple bells.” 23 �° “Would you mind holding this for me?” A tall, young woman with cuffs around her wrist, had handed Ezekiel a clutch-bag. Bulky blue rhinestones made a pattern on her dress. The dress was red. It was ankle-lengh and sleeveless and shaped in such a way that her ribbed green t-shirt, also sleeveless, showed through its several cut-outs. But it was her hair—very black and very cropped—as if an adolescent had taken a scissors to it wrathfully. Its blackness and wildness gave her slightly exotic features an indescribable edge, that along with her flushed face and unexpected visor, added up to a girl that in an odd way was breathtakingly beautiful. “She’s a model,” Ezekiel thought. “Those shoes. No one wears wedgies that are that high and that outrageous.” Shortly she got off. Ezekiel sat back for the long ride to her stop. 24 �The girl had been tall but her tallness was like a force, a tallness of mind that spilled over to her body. Her tallness had utterly absorbed the dress. 25 �° It was tall, so tall that it slumped over and made the hills seem as if they were laughing. It had been toward the middle of June when she’d seen the grass flower into bluish—almost peacock-blue— blossoms. Like a phosphoric sea continues to portray itself, the grass was continuous with none of the monotony of a color. ‘I have lost the respect of the color,’ she thought. 26 �a dark, drizzly morning. unn, in her chair, was relishing the quiet. One bird chirped with a sweet nonchalance. It was just a chirp yet Unn’s body flushed in the pleasure of it. After awhile she noticed a pattern—several chirps then stop, several chirps then stop. It was slow. So slow that when it started back up, there was the sense that even the bird was a little surprised. “Perhaps the bird is tired.” Though it didn’t sound tired. Her mind drifted off to the many things that might have made the bird tired. 27 �° “That was a good sleep.” Unn roused herself slowly. The smell in the air was heavenly. One white azalea streaked and stained with crimson—she could swear she saw it rise, hovering in the air, as the moon played with its petals. Washing felt pleasant. Fibers of light attached to early hours of day looked to Unn to have already accomplished day. She had a sudden desire to sew. 28 �° October passed and the rains settled in. The sky was full of caws and leaves. Witnessing the hill fall strangely silent, its subtle way of heightening a final strain of light. Still the shadows between some branches laid promiscuous, and to her sense redolent, supershadows on the undergrowth. 29 �° “It’s freezing!” Unn muttered as the hygienist snapped a bib around her neck. “Is it possible to turn that off,” she persisted. The girl was behind her, arranging something on a tray. “Off? I don’t know. Maybe.” Unn, tilted back by this time, tracked down the vent. She hadn’t thought to bring a sweater. Her chair faced a window against which a fluffy pine branch swayed. One huge cone was opening its wings. She could actually see inside the dark, cavernous fruit. Since the office was small and the branch huge, it fairly filled her view. Around twenty minutes passed. Now the dentist was leaning over the spot, probing it with a pick. “It’s what we call a ‘gum boil.’ It’s infected,” he said. 30 �Perhaps because of the pressure in her mouth, she felt a little giddy. A spray of white light flowed past her closed eyelids—a spray rising from behind a mammoth body. The dentist, turned away, was saying something she didn’t catch. It had been spotted and the beach closed. The whole town was waiting for it to reappear, maybe closer in. “There was only one left in the storeroom,” his assistant said, reentering the room. She was jotting something on her pad. It was high noon and the whale had jumped such that for all the world there was just the spray, the light and the blue flesh of its great body. The dentist was handing her a mirror. “This tooth has already had a root canal. It means the root must be dead and bone is being reabsorbed. That’s what creates the wobbling and consequently the gum boil.” 31 �The fat feathery pine with branches that looked like arms was waving wildly. 32 �° Unn got home late. Ezekiel’s door and window were open and she was sleeping soundly under a pleasant cross-breeze. Ezekiel, never home, always kept her door closed. “She had a root canal. The periodontist squeezed her in. She came home about an hour ago.” Töl was whispering lest she wake Ezekiel up. Stunned, Unn said nothing. Lately the girl had seemed more and more agitated. “Hello,” she’d one evening early. Her discomposure showed. “Best leave it,” Unn thought, and said nothing. 33 �it was a beautiful evening, mild and still. “It falls into different zones of emotional timing,” Ezekiel mused as her train sped forward. Aloneness, she felt, was settling into her body. Her eyes fell on a small black purse with a long slender shoulder strap. The purse looked new. Its shiny paten shone and the flap had the sort of clasp that gave it an exclusive air. She found herself starring. The strap flopped across the seat. When occasionally the car jerked, the strap slid forward. It never slid backwards however. To her surprise, at the next stop, a young woman in a pink fur coat came bounding through the car and grabbed the bag. She cast a grateful look at Ezekiel as if Ezekiel had been its savior. Beneath her coat she had on tights, and very tall, high-heeled boots that matched the bag. 34 �° That had been Saturday. The next day Ezekiel went for a foot reflexology treatment. The girl at the desk spoke only a little English. The masseuse placed a cloth over her eyes. Removing her feet from a bath he began to rub, deeply, one at a time. Ezekiel cried out and started calling for him to stop. ‘Is this yours? Is this your bag, mister?’ It was the same bag with the long shoulder strap that she had seen on the seat of the train. But he disappeared as soon as she passed the store. Only the handbag was left in the middle of the road. A wad of bills jutted through the clasp. ‘He stole it and is trying to pin the blame on me.’ Later she wondered if the store was really there. What would a stylish window with a mannequin be doing in the middle of a country road? The mannequin was naked except for the purse. Its 35 �long shoulder strap was slung across her chest so that the little bag, on the opposite hip, perched precariously. The window, brightly lit, gleamed through the dark night. ‘He might not have intended to drop the bag. Maybe he was running and hadn’t realized that it was missing.’ The slosh of a wet towel on her legs, then the rubbing of her legs woke her. “O-kay,” the man said loudly, as he started to help her up. There was a sweetness in his face with only a trace of age. 36 �° The sky was clouding at the end of a long lateautumn day. Ezekiel was standing at the bottom of the hill enjoying the evening haze and the patches of moss that it was coloring with charcoal shadows. Higher on the hill a single firefly beeped. She stared unblinking at the pines where she had seen it. A second beep from the moss. Its light, also bright, also quickly vanished. “Are you just standing there?” It was Unn. “I thought I saw some fireflies.” “Fireflies?” She was less and less distinguishable from the hill’s general undergrowth. 37 ��The Sound of White ��It started snowing just as ezekiel was getting up. She saw it start. The very first flake. Then it snowed all day and on into the night. There was a vast depth to its reflection on the hill far to either side. “Is that a wren?” It was perched on a branch. A starling too was whistling and talking. It was alone, but not solitary. The wren on the branch had been solitary. �° She’d woken up feeling low and the last fragment of a dream—one of those stupid dreams—something about bathrobes a street person was selling. She brushed her teeth gloomily. The house was still with a soft sense of nothing. Her candle had blown out. She starred at its charred and drooping wick. The candle was new. And fat. Its shrimpy little wick suddenly looked ridiculous. 42 �° Finally the snow stopped. Each tree stood under a thick coating of white. Ezekiel, having stepped outside, was taking it in slowly. The quiet of the snow . . . she watched some flakes swirl jauntily upwards. “They seem lonely. They seem separate from the sky.” Indeed as she came nearer, the flakes, as if hoarding their brightness, retracted to a looming void. 43 �° The memory of void, not as a sound but of far-off light, a distant cold light. A face, also cold, was at once in front of her and, at the same time, afloat at the foot of the sky. It had pale cheeks and cropped hair. From the window of a train she’d watched the image drain into a flat, dispiriting landscape. Factories and the chimneys of factories had sprung up and silently vanished. Ezekiel knew that each one spoke of many lives, yet at dusk, against the withered plain, they seemed empty. The train too was empty, the light inside dim. Its emptiness, like the land’s, droned on endlessly. 44 �° “Have I ever not been?” It occurred to her that her whole life could be seen as a defense against admitting it. Her loneliness and lethargy like an icicle. It resided in the air but it resided in her skin and beneath her skin, as if she’d been born in precisely this atmosphere. The bright stars too suddenly looked like icicles. 45 �° “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Luciano’s voice was low. The night was clear with a brisk, soft wind. “You can see each individual star.” “Even the silver dust,” she said, after a long pause. Both were enthralled by the massive voluptuousness. “I saw it as a kid. ‘That’s the Milky Way,’ my dad said. But ‘milky’ didn’t seem right.” “I know.” 46 �° “My eyes are watering it’s so cold.” Her cheeks were flushed. He thought he saw them flicker for a second. “It’s just my eyes. Everything else is fine,” she added, blinking rapidly as if the action itself would warm them. “We’re lucky it’s so clear.” Luciano didn’t feel like talking. He was looking at the sky and looking at Ezekiel. Silence filled the air as though the universe were voiceless now. As though a core, a point of reference, had irrevocably been torn away. When it fanned out spreading higher and higher and higher, it left Luciano and Ezekiel in darkness. 47 �“what time is it?” unn’s mind lingered in her face and tired legs. Clouds in a rising wind had moved across the sky, hiding her and the sudden flooding in her body. “It will fall again by morning,” she muttered. The window was wet and rattling slightly. It was an atmosphere more than a scene, like everyone had gone but the place still held the embers of them. 48 �° Her thoughts turned to a dream. She had come into the kitchen and in a little tray her husband had laid out all their kitchen sponges— counter sponges, scrubbers, the floppy kind for bottles. They were bone dry as if they’d just been through the microwave. Intent on his task he didn’t look up. The previous evening Unn had read that it’s good to put your sponges in the microwave. Why had it never occurred to her? In her dream it also hadn’t occurred to her. It had occurred to her husband instead. So attuned was he to her mind that even before she had discovered it, he was practicing her revelation. Perhaps in her failure to put herself in his place, and guilt about that failure, she had simply made an example of the extent to which he had done the opposite. 49 �Even in the dream—that it was couched in absurdities easy to dismiss—was it not because she feared uncovering this quality and finally, inescapably, having to face it? And the fact that upon awakening she had difficulty remembering—that certain details and expressions had been blurred—might this be because at the moment of consciousness a kind of cunning went to work to erase its accusations? When she finally got up, the earth was still. The day had the aspect of an end though it wasn’t yet five. 50 �° It did not snow, either that night nor the next day. It was bitterly cold instead. “Would you like to come?” Maybe it was nine. Ezekiel, sprawled before the hearth, was scouring a local paper. “You’re going out!” She twisted around. The scent of Ezekiel’s hair came to Unn pleasantly. “She’s lonely. Her back looks lonely.” “Okay. Yeh.” Her body was moving slowly, however. She let the ‘yeh’ soak into the air as if it were the only word left. 51 �° “That is a raven.” A large black bird from a snowy branch peered directly into her eyes. It didn’t caw. “It’s as strong as the snow, those eyes under the thick sky.” Ezekiel cracked the frame. An edge of anger seemed to emanate from its flesh but also an acceptance. ‘May my green feet fall,’ she prayed silently, passionately. Seeing them floating in a cloud of pairs, they looked nourished and watered there. 52 �° Shutting it again she wiped the wetness off her cheeks. She was aware of the bird still motionless on the branch. It’s not cawing came loud to her. She brought her hand to her face then drew a line across the pane. The misted-over glass made her X into a word. 53 �° “That old worn bell sounds cracked,” she thought. Luciano’s recording drifted from the living room. The raven had flown away. A light through clouds sparkled off the limb washing the spot clean. The white of the snow and the black of the bird— both had been still but the stillness moved in the undercurrents of her life such that Ezekiel for a second lost touch with her real life. Without the bird would the snow exist? Without the snow would she exist? It was a realization more than a statement. 54 �and now the snow was melting. They’d said six or seven inches but already there were puddles, and stacks of sludgy snowmelt. “It’s melted quite a lot,” she thought, passing a number of snowplows. It was the beginning of February. The light in the kitchen was low. The light outside as yet had no qualities. Unn realized this without any reactivity. It occurred to her that snow—it was its sound beating in her mind, warming her mind, that she felt so strongly. It congealed in her chest, like mounds of sound piling up. Actually there were two sounds, the piling up of snow and then the warm burning at the snow’s center. More than an image it was a premonition. 55 �° “The sky has turned such a summer color,” Unn muttered, fluffing her pillows to sit awhile longer. From a dawn sky tiny flakes fell. Some landed on the pane, shattering, then dribbling slowly. One or two stuck. Flattened against the glass their delicate shapes disappeared. “They’re nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Later, peering into day, there was just a little smudge. 56 �° “Well, it’s not freezing.” Thrudging through slush she felt the same as on a normal day. She had on a hat, a scarf, and hand-knit mittens from Ezekiel. “It’s almost too warm.” She pulled her hat higher on her head to expose it to the air. The freshness of the snow made the eaves look even deeper, as if all the earth were at rest. A flake landed on her tooth. “The cold here is different. When you touch something, it feels different.” She listened to the frost monotonously dribble from a tree. Her mind was blank yet the blankness had a color. Now there is sky away from any color. And little bumps of grayish hardened snow. As when winter is over and there are no birds. 57 ��The Deepest Blue of Sky ��Sometimes the day would begin with a particular warming light, very clear, almost sumptuous. “Why am I so happy?” Ezekiel thought, watching a rosel sun rise. As she walked the thought returned, yet it didn’t register as a thought. Instead it was a color. On the sand lay a small starfish. Its rays were short. And it seemed young, hardly more than a baby. “Should I put it back in the water?” Two or three sea-birds, lustrous black, had their long necks thrust out on the waves. 61 �° “What an uncommonly lovely day,” Ezekiel reflected. Really it was May but it was April with its turgid air and fat, plethoric clouds, barely blue, beginning to swell in space. Shortly they formed banks. Mountains and towers of billowy whiteness. Above them there was nothing. Above that, a few wafts of puffiness. 62 �° The next day there was rain, a hard spring rain. Sandy water near the shore swished back and forth quietly. “But it sticks to my toes and the holes between my toes!” She wished she had a better word. Five or six papery white flowers waved in the sea air. She’d passed one earlier on her bike. It was bowing gracefully toward a stretch of barren shoreline. Such an incredibly beautiful flower, slim and erect, seemed rather suited to a hot house than a rough, unprotected coast. 63 �° ‘She’s beautiful alright, but . . . ’ Ezekiel couldn’t think of the word. Still-wet hair, parted to the side, hugged a blondish head and fell to the back. She’d been leaning against a railing. Elbows bent and anchored against her breasts, her hands were by her ears as if she were checking her earrings. Ezekiel didn’t see any earrings though. A shadow had crossed the girl making her all the more striking. 64 �° EZEKIEL, EZEKIEL, someone was calling. She paused thinking she might have heard her name. She was immaculately dressed in her new white jacket and the weather was perfect. Ezekiel turned over. The room was dark. Her clock was facing away so she couldn’t see the time. The feeling of the caller shouting her name and the pause, the vague turn of her body, as if she had heard a sound, but no, it was nothing, and she’d walked on. Immediately there was rain, a hard spring rain. She’d felt the presence of the rain, as if it were both inside her and simultaneously falling all the way down to the water. EZEKIEL. EZEKIEL. The cantilena of the word was like the muffled noise of drops. She peered at the sea barely visible in the mist. It had the same clean beauty as the girl. 65 �“it’s pink, isn’t it? that sky is pink!” Unn was trying to remember if she’d ever seen such a sky. The cabby said nothing though his neck swiveled to the left slightly. “It’s pink! The sky’s never pink!” Amazed at her outburst, Unn slid back in her seat. From the musty smell of his shirt she had gotten his “What-of-it.” 66 �° He left her at the sea. The sand, dead-white, sparkled in the sun. Swarms of insects whirled around restlessly. “They’re almost frantic,” she was thinking. Tiny wings crowded her legs. Likewise the palms. She noticed that their tips, even on the stillest day, trembled slightly. “Nathan. Point to the sun. Show me the sun.” A mother was holding a book in such a way that both of her children could see. Her daughter who was older immediately pointed to the sun. “No Maddy. It’s Nathan’s turn.” Nathan slowly put his finger on the drawing. “That’s right. Maddy, point to the fence. Very good.” “He’s smart isn’t he, Mama?” Maddy was turning away. 67 �Nathan had turned and was giving his sister a hug. “He likes me, doesn’t he?” Maddy’s face beamed. She pulled her brother closer. Maddy looked to be four. The boy, two or three. His hair was black. Both children were chubby. “What a pleasant family,” Unn thought, descending a path toward the tulip field. A small pond with several big fish lay to the right of the beds. “I picked a good day,” she thought, wandering over to a stand of Asian Willows. 68 �° That night Unn had a dream. A table with a lamp and a single glass of water stood at the head of a deathbed. The lamp, turned low, lent the room a quiet, attended-to feeling. As Unn approached she could see her mother’s face, but its shape was like a tulip. The thin neck was bandaged and the head also, though it appeared in the shape of a tulip, resembled a cast. The soul of the deceased flower . . . She glanced at the clock. Unn had always associated tulips with her young, beautiful mother. As the woman aged their relationship had failed. Yet it would seem from the dream that something of the earlier warmth had been maintained. As if the true nature of her mother had pressed the badness into a flower. On the outside there were bandages but on the inside, sculpting them to herself, 69 �she had preserved to the end those aspects Unn had so adored. Unn thought she recalled that the blankets were richly colored giving the whole bed the feeling of a garden. 70 �ezekiel sat at her mirror and slowly undid her braid. It was late and she was tired. “My hair smells like train,” she said. “I’ll wash it in the morning.” When she sniffed at a bunch it smelled fusty. 71 �° “Oh I’m sorry.” Ezekiel paused. She sensed that she’d interrupted. A girl, muttering something she didn’t catch, was half-facing a window. Her dress was from the 50’s. It had capped sleeves and an empire waist that immediately flared into a calf-length skirt of butter yellow satin with an overlayer of lace. The lace was scarlet and stopped just below the knee leaving a wide border of yellow in turn bordered by a very thin ribbon of red. But what stood out for Ezekiel was the hoop. Circling her hips it organized the drape such that from the band of the empire it fell, first softly, then billowed down gracefully. The line was clean and fresh which the girl’s aristocratic, very long, somewhat nervous body addressed. A huge yellow flower with two green sprigs perched on her ring finger. “It’s gorgeous. She’s gorgeous.” For a minute Ezekiel 72 �forgot what she’d come for. “Are you leaving?” The girl was making an effort. “I have a headache.” Ezekiel didn’t want to talk but more than that she felt the girl didn’t want to talk. “It must be here somewhere,” she muttered, shuffling through what had become a gigantic pile. She felt herself blushing. 73 �° “She had on sandals!” It was Ezekiel’s first thought the next morning. Her naturally slim, straight toes had lain comfortably on the soles, so fine-boned and slender. Ezekiel had averted her eyes. The exposure wasn’t being given to her and felt indeed too intimate for her. It wasn’t until now, in an unguarded moment, that she even remembered that she had done that. Her thoughts shifted to the girl. She wondered if the fact that her image remained within her . . . She didn’t even know her. What would it mean to know her? And how would she know that she knew her. Her image of the girl flowed through time, but was her image simultaneously in the girl? Of course time would flow differently in her. 74 �Even if she knew her, she would never know how time flowed in her or how, within herself, the girl experienced time. 75 �° Ezekiel was a bird. She wore a chocolate-brown crèpede-chine pinafore with a black velvet yoke and feathers down the front. ‘Just flutter around,’ had been her instruction. She remembered hovering near some pussy willows at stage left. 76 �° It was early afternoon on a beautiful springlike day. A colony of rooks had distilled into the sky after hovering around the breakwater. Immediately a gull treading the air, angling its body to a wave—she was betting with herself as to when it would nab a fish when it sailed backwards and upwards and vanished in a burst of sun. “The certainty of that bird’s body, its musculature, its control, even its foggy color seems ideally suited to its life.” Ezekiel stared out brutally aware of her own notideally-suited body. 77 �one may morning unn fell into a heavy incomplete sleep. She’d been cleaning the house with the television on when her husband’s face appeared on the screen. As soon as it was visible, a little mouse that he used to feed began to scramble up the wall toward his face. In its excitement it got very high up, impossibly high. It didn’t squeak but its fur spread out and seemed to soften and thicken as if its body were purring. She had thrown off all her covers. Her old body lay flat. Time felt palpable in her chest. She wondered if the fact that things ceased to exist in her meant that they ceased to exist. Does time cease to exist or does it flow parallel to what looks like one’s existence? What is one’s existence? What is the relation between time and one’s existence? 78 �° Snatches of conversation, a strained trombone, the hilarious glee of laughter making its slow way to the river. She was hanging out a window, trying to see through the masks and drowning voices, was it candy they were throwing and the children screaming and the float just beyond where she could still make out the mast? Previously the parade had followed the narrow streets typical of downtown St. Louis. She could almost hear the creak of the great wooden wheels turning at a crossroad. 79 �° KASURI DYEWORKS the sign announced. A faded cotton curtain flapped in a breeze. Unn paused at the door. The young couple specialized in traditional Japanese fabric. Apparently, even in Japan, increasingly it was no longer obtainable. Unn knew that they were thinking of closing the shop. She glanced at the sign. Its weatherworn calligraphy bore a mark of standing but in the event, it seemed weak, as if the owners had lost their faith. To the ordinary passerby it simply looked to be decorative. 80 �° KASURI DYEWORKS. The fabric shop had closed. In its place was a bike repair garage. It seemed that the garage had bought the convenience store as well. A flower vendor stood in front with a small cart. “All I have is some plain wildflowers,” the woman said when Unn approached, obviously looking to buy something. “I like wildflowers. They look so fresh, as if they were just gathered this morning.” “I go every morning, ma’am. I like wildflowers too.” “The shop that was here before . . . ” Unn began. She thought perhaps the woman might have heard what had happened to the couple. She seemed not to be very intelligent. “These here,”—she was pointing to some lupine—“I’d recommend these ma’am. They’re very fresh.” 81 �Ezekiel is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice; it was released by Adobe Systems in 1990. Cover art: Gail Sher. Cover design: Bryan Kring. ������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ezekiel Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2015 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780985884345 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_056 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. White Dew, Summer Ends Three Evening Bells The Sound of White The Deepest Blue of Sky Extent The size or duration of the resource. 96 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/8bbdbcbf73142209de8fa8604670c2a3.pdf 7161a7661bdec7f351f293a2accfa735 PDF Text Text East Wind Melts the Ice & Other Stories East_Wind_text .indd 1 1/23/07 11:02:04 PM �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 East_Wind_text .indd 2 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �East Wind Melts the Ice & Other Stories Gail Sher Q night crane press 2007 East_Wind_text .indd 3 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �Copyright 2007, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. isbn: 978–0–9726115–9–6 East_Wind_text .indd 4 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �For Brendan East_Wind_text .indd 5 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 6 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �table of contents Author’s Note ix East Wind Melts the Ice 1 Doves Spread Their Wings 5 Earthworms Come Out 11 The Butcherbird is Silent 15 The Eaglehawk Studies and Learns 23 Swallows Return 31 Burrowing Beetles Wall Up Their Doors with Earth 37 The Tiger Begins to Roam 45 Magpies Nest 53 Waters and Swamps are Thick and Hard 57 East_Wind_text .indd 7 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 8 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �author’s note These fragments are renditions (often simple retellings) of stories from modern Japanese literature and journalism. By highlighting (zeroing in on) a particular aspect or portion of a larger piece, the focus shifts (narrows and intensifes) so that a certain quality becomes more evident, poignant or simply celebrated. To Yasunari Kawabata, Nagai Kafu, and other modern Japanese writers who inspired these versions, I offer them with a deep bow. gail sher ix East_Wind_text .indd 9 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 10 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �east wind melts the ice East_Wind_text .indd 1 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 2 1/23/07 11:02:05 PM �“The four children playing twenty questions downstairs in the children’s room could be heard clearly on the second foor.” Such was the opening sentence of (in her opinion) a way-too short story. The quickest child turned out to be the youngest, a second-grader, who correctly guessed the word “raindrops” from four hints. The precocious boy’s mother was insisting that the neighbor’s child (the child who asked “Does it sound like—drip drip drip?”) had clearly known the answer and “let” her child win. “If rain makes noise, it’s raindrops,” she’d said. “That’s not true. The sound of rain and the sound of raindrops aren’t the same,” retorted a supporter of the second-grader—not his mother—who, it turned out, was, to begin with, embarrassed by her other (older) child’s choice of the unpleasant word “raindrops.” She felt that the neighbor’s youngster, knowing that her boy (when leader) always picked unpleasant words, would easily have guessed “raindrops.” It was obvious to her, and therefore doubly humiliating, that he had more or less “given” her little one the glory of winning. The squabbling of the children plus the symbolic distances of both the parental eavesdropping and subsequent commentary, duplicated later in their 3 East_Wind_text .indd 3 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �own marital squabbles and distances, fascinated her. But the real hold, what carried over to the next day and even the next, was the author’s unequivocal distinction between the sound of rain and the sound of raindrops. Of course it was so, but she had never thought about it. 4 East_Wind_text .indd 4 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �doves spread their wings East_Wind_text .indd 5 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 6 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �It was upon comparing the portrait she had once made as a tribute to her dead mother with Nakamura Tsune’s Portrait of His Aged Mother that her insight slowly began to emerge. Whereas her portrait, sketched from an early photograph of her mother, made her mother seem younger and even more beautiful than she actually had been at the time the photograph was taken, Tsune’s, completed while his mother was still alive, had been done in a simple style with dark, cold coloring. His stooped, emaciated woman, seated in profle against a halfwainscoted wall, prayer beads dangling from her wrinkled fngers, probably refected Tsune’s feelings toward his own approaching death. Her painting, on the other hand, done while grieving the loss of her mother, her lover, and their miscarried baby, seemed shallow and self-indulgent by comparison. Which is odd. How can one explain the fact that she, with her triple sorrow, painted a sort of sweet, pretty likeness void of any sense of pain, while Tsune, whose mother yet lived, conveyed his suffering starkly and profoundly? It must be that both of them, choosing as their ostensible subject the aging and death of their mothers, were actually painting self-portraits. Even as she thought this, the memory of her frequent glances in the mirror to check the contours of her face as she painted, rose vividly before her. At the time she had rationalized 7 East_Wind_text .indd 7 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �this tactic by reminding herself of the strong resemblance she bore to her mother. Her musings brought up the question of the degree to which one’s love for others is, in reality, selflove. In her situation, for example, all three persons mourned were fully alive within her. Her experience of them therefore had to be affected by her everchanging experience of herself. Somehow the part she played, perpetually infusing them with life, had never occurred to her. The two pieces of this that were most disturbing, and suggested that her behavior, to a much larger degree than she cared to admit, had been solipsistically driven, were frst her portrayal of her dead mother as young and beautiful, insisting on this, in fact leaving any trace of death out of the painting altogether, and second the conviction to which she has been quite wedded of having lugged another around in her heart for a quarter of a century, when more accurately the weight she has borne was a split-off part of her self. Refecting on the former, and taking a lesson from Tsune, she couldn’t help but feel that her sole purpose in having created that portraiture was to perpetuate her mother’s function as mirror to the beauty and youth she herself was terrifed of losing. Her mother was dead. If the painting had been about her 8 East_Wind_text .indd 8 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �mother, it would have had to include something on this subject. But wait. Within the striking image she drew of her young, beautiful mother, an ardent brunette, spunky, feisty—within the glamour and sweet smells, exotic and exciting, did there not lurk a whirlwind of life force expending itself to keep itself alive? One could argue, given her own circumstance of extreme youth at the time of her mother’s death, that this was the side of death with which she was most familiar—the only side in fact that she could have painted with authenticity. Just as a giant red balloon contains within its sheath of air a shriveled knot of rubber that one instinctively tosses (and that this is evident to the eyes of an observer if she will only see it)—metaphorically speaking this explained what was happening to her now. She was beginning to see it. The case of her lover (or “ex-lover”—it was diffcult to call him that since her inner world belied it) was more complex. A part of her perfectly understood that he lived with his wife and three children in a travel-to-able city. But did he infuse her as she infused him with abundant, exuberant life? Did she owe the very transformation she was presently undergoing to the power of his imagination? One wondered. 9 East_Wind_text .indd 9 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �As in a dream whose various fgures represent various sub-personalities of the dreamer, so in this “relationship” it must be that its various aspects, fashioned though they were on external originals, had nevertheless, over the course of years, quietly melded into the character of their maker. Lovers though they may have been in the past, their hearts had fowed along separate streams of time. The qualities she once admired in him were her qualities now—the “him” she thought of herself as loving, a mental “balloon” infated with devotion that would as surely shrivel the second she withdrew it. 10 East_Wind_text .indd 10 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �earthworms come out East_Wind_text .indd 11 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 12 1/23/07 11:02:06 PM �Kawabata’s ffty-ninth birthday had been only a month away when the collection of stories written at the end of his career (he had been ill but at the height of his power) was published. That was her age now, she thought, unsure of the import. One story, “This Country, That Country,” had been the title of an article featuring England’s Princess Margaret, who apparently had changed her mind about her betrothal to Group Captain Townsend. Four years previous (while visiting Balmoral) the lovers had hoisted a stone onto a mound of similar stones, publicly acknowledging their feelings. The journalist made the point that while it was impossible to tell which stone the Princess and Group Captain Townsend had added to the pile, since none looked as though the Princess alone could have lifted it, they must have lifted it together. When reading the article, Takako, Kawabata’s heroine, had tried to picture the princess as she would have looked hoisting the stone onto the mound in tandem with the Group Captain, but the image that came was “simply an image.” Whereas the previous day Takako had felt sorry for the princess (who had been forced by church law and royal custom to abandon her beloved), that feeling was now gone. Her empathy itself “seemed like a foreign story.” 13 East_Wind_text .indd 13 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 14 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �the butcherbird is silent East_Wind_text .indd 15 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 16 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �“The idea that her kittens might be sacrifced by her mother—that in the hierarchy of values held by her mother the lives of kittens were certainly of less importance than, for example, Frank-san’s slightest whim—must have been alive to the girl before the animals were even born.” Such were her thoughts as she re-read the story by a casual friend of the child’s mother: Indeed, now that I remember the frst conversation I had with her, that strange afternoon inside the shabby cottage, Mariko huddling over the pregnant cat curled up on the tatami and commenting, quite out of the blue, “She’s going to have kittens. Do you want a kitten?” What strikes me most is how the child, ignoring my “Oh really? How nice...I’m sure they’ll all fnd nice homes,” became surprisingly insistent, almost demanding. How could I have failed to notice the anguish and despair arising from her helplessness in the face of (in her mind) certain disaster. By screaming at her mother that most unchildlike, “Why do you always go away with Frank-san? Frank-san pisses like a pig. He’s a pig in a sewer...” she made her analysis of the situation abundantly clear. If Sachiko’s own life was held in abeyance, it would be foolish to expect (and this is what did not escape Mariko’s perspicacity) her own or those of her kittens to be more highly regarded. 17 East_Wind_text .indd 17 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �There were many occasions when Mariko’s preoccupation (one could almost say obsession) with her kittens, for now there were three, Atsu, Mee-Chan and SujiChan, was in evidence, but by far the most poignant of these was the day of our outing. The outing had been planned to celebrate the imminent departure of Mariko and Sachiko for the home of Sachiko’s uncle. Frank-san for the moment was out of the picture. Sachiko, while procrastinating, giving her uncle a moving date and then doing nothing to prepare so that weeks after the established time she still had not packed a single item, held frm to her intention. She and Mariko would live in her uncle’s spacious house and Mariko would have tutors and private schooling. After all, wasn’t Mariko’s education what she must concern herself with above all else? The outing was designed to be one last day together at our ease. The lift up the mountainside had indeed proven spectacular, the picnic on top and the vistas on our little hikes exceedingly pleasant. Toward evening, after a department-store supper, we strolled through sidestreets in little hurry to reach the fnal tram depot. On one such sidestreet we chanced upon a kujibiki stand. Mariko instantly asked to play, and noticing Sachiko’s reservation, I handed her a coin. Since Mariko appeared to be a child, the stand-keeper instructed her to close her eyes while drawing her ticket and visualize the big furry bear. Mariko: “I don’t want the bear. I want the basket,” 18 East_Wind_text .indd 18 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �pointing to the back of the stall. The man shrugged. “All right, princess, close your eyes tight and imagine your basket. Ready?” The frst time Mariko’s ticket won a fower pot. The second time she (now it comes back to me clearly) won a pencil. We were about to leave when Mariko pressed to try yet a third time. She seemed so desperate, so single-minded, her emotional intensity so unsuited to the “we-all-know-no-oneever-wins-anything-serious” attitude with which most passers-by play. Mariko, just then, was not a mere passer-by but, for whatever reason, both her mother and I refused to see that. As luck would have it, on her third try Mariko won, not the basket but what the stall-keeper described as a “major prize.” This turned out to be a large wooden box. Made of smooth, unvarnished pine, it was light, like an orange crate, and had two sliding panels of wire gauze. Mariko, thoughtful, inquired, “Couldn’t we carry the kittens in here when we go to Uncle’s? We could put down a rug. I’m sure they’ll be quite comfortable.” Sachiko wasn’t so sure but on refection could picture it working as Mariko described. Several days later, however, Frank-san’s car was back and their plans had changed. They weren’t going to go to America immediately. Frank-san would put Sachiko and Mariko up in Kobe while he went to America to send for them after he 19 East_Wind_text .indd 19 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �found work. They were leaving tomorrow. Sachiko was quite agitated, throwing essentials into valises, boxes, what-have-you. She kept repeating that she couldn’t take everything. Some things would have to be left behind. She hoped I could use some of the things as they, many of them, were quite valuable. Mariko sat in the corner of the tatami playing with her kittens, expressionless. “Have you decided yet?” she asked abruptly. “We’ll talk about that later,” her mother began when Mariko broke in, “But you said I could keep them” and began to intone to me, “She said I could keep them. She promised I could keep them.” Sachiko turned toward her daughter, spotted the orange crate and yanked a kitten from the tatami, tossing it inside. Mariko was still hugging one of the tiny black kittens to her chest. She said nothing as her mother shut the other two inside the crate. Then she held the kitten out to me. “This is Atsu. Do you want to see him?” Mariko grabbed it away from her yelling, “It is just an animal. Like a rat or a snake. It’s just an animal.” She dropped the creature into the crate and left the cottage. Mariko, still blank-faced, shadowed her. Sachiko headed for the river. First she took one kitten in her hands and tried to drown it by holding it under the water. When after a few minutes it wouldn’t die, she put it back into the box and edged the entire crate into 20 East_Wind_text .indd 20 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �the river. To prevent it foating, she leaned forward and momentarily held it down. Mariko watched, transfxed, from the top of a slope behind her mother. As the box began to bob its way downstream, it caught in some reeds, was freed by a current and continued its journey. Mariko ran along the bank, stopping to watch the box till only a small corner was visible above the surface. Sachiko, who by now was aware of her daughter’s presence, called to her before turning back to the cottage but her voice was the perfunctory voice of a weary mother doing what is expected of her. She shrugged her shoulders and walked back with the exasperated step of one who has experienced an unwanted delay. I turned in search of Mariko. Toward dusk I found her crouched on a bridge staring into the water. 21 East_Wind_text .indd 21 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 22 1/23/07 11:02:07 PM �the eaglehawk studies and learns East_Wind_text .indd 23 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 24 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �If the truth be told, though the report of the Master’s retirement game had been serialized in an exhaustive sixty-four installments, we were only now, through more heuristic means, beginning to grasp the momentous nature of this occasion. No one could have been more respectful, more knowledgeable, more observant nor sparing of himself in his reportage than Uragami, whose newspaper, the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun, had sponsored the match and whose devotion to Honnimbo Shusai had been entire. Yet, having read what he had to say, one feels that the account, focused primarily on externals, served rather to elegize (lament) than to parse (examine closely) the illusive events for posterity. For example we learn that the match itself, lasting fourteen sessions, began in Tokyo on June 26, 1938, and ended, not quite six months later, on December 4, in Ito. The Master died on January 18, 1940. Most certainly the ordeal had taken his life. But such facts tell us little. Their very paucity arouses a strange interest in minutiae, like the very long hair Uragami noticed in the Master’s left eyebrow, as if something ultimate in our understanding hinges on getting these correct. Mr. Uragami himself says that his noticing the hair and writing about it was a trifing matter. The important point was that he had 25 East_Wind_text .indd 25 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �noticed it at a diffcult moment—that it had come as a sort of rescue. But such thinking is apocryphal and now that we realize it, our inclination is to extrapolate—to posit that hidden within this single feature of the Master’s visage (a sort of metaphysical heirloom/philosopher’s stone) is an elixir with transmutative properties compensatory to our age’s precise shortcomings. Buried in Uragami’s treatment of a day’s session at Hakone was the following brief paragraph: Today I discovered for the frst time a white hair about an inch long in the Master’s eyebrow. Standing out from the swollen-eyed, heavy veined face, it too somehow came as a savior. Several days after this article had appeared (and two days before he died) the Master and his wife had made a trip to Atami to get the Master a shave. Phoning a reliable barber, the Master had told him that he had one very long hair in his left eyebrow, that it was a hair of good luck, a sign of long life and that he, the barber, was not to touch it. Of course the barber agreed. Amazingly the Master had not himself previously noticed the hair. He had only recently read about it in Uragami’s newspaper article. While his wife related this story, the Master remained silent 26 East_Wind_text .indd 26 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �but, Uragami tells us, a ficker crossed his face “as if it had caught the shadow of a passing bird.” Uragami has refected that more than a decade has passed since the Master’s death and no method has been devised for determining the succession to the title “Master of Go.” Instead, rationalism, with its tedious rules, meticulous point system, and emphasis on winning, had wrung the concepts of dignity and affatus out of the process. “Victory” has become a commercial asset for a competitive person (read “disciple of Go”). The life of a player today, far from lustrative, is consumed by contests, annual title matches, and recitals of strength in fashy championship tournaments. In all three matches played in the last decade of his life, the Master fell ill midway through. After the frst he was bedridden. After the third he died. Each game took inordinately long. It was as if, in these fnal play-offs, an epoch (a complete system of values and aesthetics) virtually embodied in the Master, came grinding to a halt. The last, nimbus of an eon, should, in its own right, have been a masterpiece, but as Uragami says, “By this time the Master could not stand outside the rules of equality.” Witness the contrast between the Master and his opponent, Uragami continues. Once the former, 27 East_Wind_text .indd 27 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �quiet and nerveless, sank into a game, he did not leave. Otake, on the other hand, frequently excused himself, presumably as a consequence of his habit of drinking copious pots of tea. (Otake’s diffculty, however, did not stop at enuresis. Often he would leave his overskirt behind him in the hallway and his obi as well.) His way of sitting down and getting up were as if readying himself for battle. Typically a long deliberation would be capped in the fnal minute by a hundred or a hundred ffty plays of surging violence—quite unlike the Master’s steadfast immobility, suggestive of one who has lost all consciousness of his own identity. One indeed got the impression that when the Master was seated at the Go board he had the power to quiet his surroundings. This power, the result of long training and discipline, “alchemically” affected the Master’s physical body and was especially noticeable (Uragami reports with some authority, since he took the last photographs) in his dead body where his large, longish face with its bold features, his strong jaw and his disproportionately long trunk seemed exaggerated. Even more pronounced, we read, was the eerie sense one had of his torso disappearing from the waist down. His legs and hips, insubstantial to the extreme, seemed inadequate even for his weight (which we know to be about sixty-fve)—a 28 East_Wind_text .indd 28 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �child’s weight. His knees (in seiza it was obvious) appeared transparently thin. The Master’s physique confrms what those knowledgeable about the spirit of Go have long suspected—that the intense concentration required will chisel away at a player’s manifest being (it is almost as if concentration itself replaces a player’s body). One would imagine that when in recess the Master would prefer diversions of an altogether different nature, but Uragami explicitly noted that the Master was literally addicted to games—mahjongg, billiards, chess—which he passionately played day and night, even in the interval between a professional session and dinner. Uragami’s description of a glimpse he had one day of the Master walking the hundred or so yards across the garden from the outbuilding of the Naraya Inn to his apartment in the main building bears this out on the one hand, and ironically (that it should come from a mere glimpse) gives us more of an insight than we get anywhere else in the report of the true magnitude of what is before us. Just beyond the gate of the outbuilding was a short slope and the Master, palms lightly clasped behind him, bent forward as he climbed it. His body, held perfectly straight from the hips, made his spindly 29 East_Wind_text .indd 29 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �legs seem all the more accessory. “The retreating fgure of the Master against the background sound of fowing water carried along with it the retreating fragrance of Go as a graceful and elegant path,” Uragami eulogized. From photographs of the dead body, in which there appears to be only a head, a doll’s head, almost gruesome (as if severed), the Master’s martyrdom (we name it from our present vantage point)—the sacrifce of an invincible life for the sake of an art that is no longer relevant—was all but conclusive. 30 East_Wind_text .indd 30 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �swallows return East_Wind_text .indd 31 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 32 1/23/07 11:02:08 PM �Nagai Kafu idealized prostitutes and set the scene, no doubt as a statement of mutability, of a story which still haunted her, on the Ginza in “second” Tokyo (which succeeded “frst” Tokyo, destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1923 and which, in its own turn, disappeared in the American incendiary raids of 1945). Perhaps he envied their cavalier style, their freedom to eschew the social constraints that he, raised in a respectable family, had to suffer. He was certainly aware that their feckless ways were also precarious. Take a waitress, for example. Her livelihood might easily have depended on the generosity (read “loneliness or sexual neediness”) of strangers—customers who dropped into one’s restaurant—or, after-hours, passers-by on the street who responded in kind to a seductive “Hey loverboy, how ’bout a cup of tea?” And of course, as he pointed out, among themselves these people made their own fne distinctions. The combs in one’s hair, the “fying” pattern on one’s kimono, the twill of one’s haori, the embroidery on a sash—if the slightest bit frowsy, mockingly declared one as incult. Or even those between waitress-prostitute, geisha-prostitute and out-and-out prostitute. This nomenclature clearly signaled a level of expertise in the work of giving pleasure that closely affected the bearer and toward which she must have bowed. The bottom line was one’s ability to arouse a fantasy, 33 East_Wind_text .indd 33 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �the suggestion that anything might be possible, that “with me one might enter the highest realms of the unknown”—which allure, by the way, was the same as that offered by houses of God. From this standpoint Kafu’s attraction to his subject made sense. In fact, now that she refected, she thought her own fascination with this particular story had to do with the loyal nature of the bond between its hero and heroine, held frm despite their obvious character faws and wild vicissitudes in the back alleys of their external lives. One of the most notable features of this world, at least for her what stood out and stayed with her, was the constancy of its ephemerality. While nothing lasted, nothing signifcant appeared to change even over the course of generations. The story began in typical desuetude—the couple, dishabilled from having just awakened, were calculating, what with the New Year approaching and her in her late thirties/early forties, how much longer could they go on living off her earnings? Granted she was still lovely and looked much younger than she actually was but...did they need to begin...at which moment she was called to the phone. Her immediate presence was required at an assignation house. But they were used to this. She wanted to be called as much as possible. Frequently there wasn’t time even for a bowl of rice. She dressed and few off, leaving Jukichi to 34 East_Wind_text .indd 34 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �eat his soft-boiled egg and warmed leftover milk alone. He tidied up and ran whatever errands. OChiyo could be back tonight or tomorrow some time, possibly tomorrow night, in which case she’d call or have someone call. Other men would resent this eclipsed existence, but the decisive turn toward intimacy in their relationship had happened on the occasion of his letting her know that he “got” the nature of her work (which was not in a bar as she had told him) and that it was okay. So long as she was straight with him, whatever she did was fne. The relief for both of them at this extraordinary conversation—most of it conveyed through gesture and facial expression—left its indelible mark. They became inseparable from that moment. The specifcs shifted. The woman’s house from where originated most of O-Chiyo’s work was raided and they had to evacuate the neighborhood immediately on threat of arrest. Shortly thereafter O-Chiyo, in a crowded street with a new customer, got separated from him and when she ran to catch up, joining hands again, she found herself holding the hand of the wrong person. This man, however, a genial, philandering ex-offcial who had lived down a bribery scandal, whisked her into a cab and in the end set her up in a house of her own choosing as his concubine. Jukichi, being the one with free time, found the house and, in addition, an apartment 35 East_Wind_text .indd 35 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �several blocks away for himself so they could stay together except for the nights the man came around. These little developments, beginning with his discovery of her working as a prostitute, only served to strengthen Jukichi’s connection to O-Chiyo. The idea that other men found pleasure in her body somehow made her all the more appealing. Unlike O-Chiyo, Jukichi held a university degree. He had tried his hand at writing but his enthusiasm at every employment opportunity trailed off shortly after he was hired. Should he be ashamed of allowing a woman to support him (of battening at her expense) or just resign himself that this was how he was? After all, within its own defnitions, their way of life was honest. O-Chiyo seemed happy. They were neither hypocritical nor materialistic, which was saying a lot in the day’s land of lies. 36 East_Wind_text .indd 36 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �burrowing beetles wall up their doors with earth East_Wind_text .indd 37 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 38 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �Gentle, quiet, graceful though Yukiko was, she was (they would never have said so, which—as she became increasingly engrossed—increasingly irked her) an embarrassment to her sisters. The fact that she had passed the marriageable age (she had reached thirty without a husband) was like a thorn in the family’s side, reminding them of the gradual decline in status of the Makioka name and the concomitant need for adjustment in their attitude. It used to be that the willful rejection of an even slightly defcient suitor was in keeping with their prosperity and reputation as members of an old and established household. But extravagance (their father had been an ostentatious spender) and mismanagement had taken their toll. Tatsuo, the eldest sister Tsuruko’s husband, who had become head of the family after their father died, discovered the deceased man’s business to have been heavily in debt. It was Tatsuo ultimately, against “loud” protests from his sisters-in-law, who had taken the decisive step to sell the shop. Worried about his responsibility as family heir, he had chosen what for him would be the safer, more familiar course—to stay in banking. Oddly, it was also Tatsuo, austere, retired, almost timid, who had taken up the cause (apropos the Makioka’s new lowered standards) of fnding Yukiko a husband. 39 East_Wind_text .indd 39 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �One of the executives in Tatsuo’s bank had acted as the go-between. The candidate was heir to a wealthy family, himself an executive of a bank in a provincial city. Though Tatsuo knew Yukiko was loath to leave Kobe, her wishes on this score were too irrelevant to be taken seriously. (In his opinion, the provinces suited her shy, non-urbane ways.) Since the two banks corresponded, Tatsuo was privy to all the information he needed concerning the man’s character, fnances, and social position, which was, if anything, a little too high for the current standing of the Makiokas. Yukiko, however, had not been predisposed to approve of a choice by the very brother-in-law who, in selling the family’s business, had behaved in a way that violated (she was certain) her dead father’s wishes. What’s more, she had found the man countrifed. Yukiko didn’t need her degree from a ladies’ seminary to spot his lack of breeding. She would be quite unable to respect him. Rather than saying so directly, she hemmed and hawed, giving vague answers that could be taken to mean anything. Tatsuo, conveniently, had taken her reticence to mean that she was not hostile to the proposal. So that when, in the end, she said a fat “No—the fellow lacks an intelligent face,” Tatsuo was stunned. He privately suspected her of deliber40 East_Wind_text .indd 40 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �ately trying to embarrass him (a grave misreading of Yukiko’s nature). Yukiko was happiest when allowed to live out her life in the household of her second oldest sister, Sachiko. Their Kobe home was modern and casual and Etsuko, her niece, thrived on the exclusive ministerings of her cultured aunt. In some ways Yukiko was closer to Etsuko and a better “mother” to her than Sachiko (which fact Sachiko recognized and was grateful for). Forever useful here, Yukiko dreaded being called to the Main House in Osaka, where her brother-in-law and Tsuruko periodically got it in their heads that she more properly belonged. She also dreaded the increasingly infrequent miai arranged on her behalf by an assortment of matchmakers. She said nothing of course. Silently she participated in one after another. They seemed frequent because of her mortifcation at being paraded before the unappreciative—her delicate, slender, old-world beauty was not what was wanted (therefore placing her in the demeaning position of entertaining rejection by her cultural inferiors) as well as the fact that they jeopardized her present living arrangement, which privately she found most satisfactory. To her credit, Sachiko, determined to fnd a man who preferred, nay, who would downright insist on, a woman of 41 East_Wind_text .indd 41 1/23/07 11:02:09 PM �Yukiko’s calibre, ardently defended her. But as time wore on, a promising candidate weakened even Sachiko’s integrity. Ironically it was Sachiko’s lively presence, her more accessible beauty, that dwarfed Yukiko’s more subdued one. Indeed the younger sister appeared, beside her ever-bright elder, a bit moody. Recently a faint spot, a mere shadow that came and went in cycles, was showing itself over Yukiko’s left eye. Sachiko and Teinosuke were worried it would negatively affect the opinion of a new prospect that had been found through the good offces of Itani, their hairdresser. (Sachiko, knowing Itani’s fondness for arranging marriages, had left Yukiko’s photograph with her.) Itani, it turned out, had sent the picture to a man she’d heard about but hadn’t heard back from for so long, she’d nearly forgotten him. Later she had learned he was busy investigating Yukiko’s background. Itani meanwhile had gleaned the following about the man: 1) He was an offce worker at M.B. Chemical Industries, a French company. 2) He lived with his mother in a small house that he had purchased some time ago by installment. 3) Though he was over forty, he looked younger. 4) He had never been married. (This was the biggest plus. The Makiokas had more or less given up hope of fnding a previously unmarried man. Also that he might 42 East_Wind_text .indd 42 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �know French was of interest.) 5) His photograph had revealed a plain enough person, a middling offce worker—one could tell at a glance. 6) His income accordingly was moderate—what one might expect. Segoshi had actually managed to spend a few moments alone with Yukiko at the hasty miai that had been conducted. When he later requested a second interview (just with her), she hadn’t refused, which was uncharacteristic of her, nor had she objected to an x-ray and skin examination when at one point the question of the strange mark over her eye had become the focus of attention. Though she revealed by not the slightest quiver her true feelings on the matter, her docility—could this in itself be an indication that even Yukiko was concerned about spinsterhood? How seriously had she taken the old adage “bad luck chases women born in the year of the ram”? Segoshi’s investigations were completed and he was anxious to move forward, but the Main House in Osaka, for some reason, dallied. Itani was relentless and Sachiko in turn grew impatient with the Main House. She watched herself become more and more hopeful that this time the negotiations would succeed. With a little distance and greater objectivity, 43 East_Wind_text .indd 43 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �however, she realized that their very desire for a match (out of all proportion to what they could reasonably expect) had the perverse effect of dazzling them, heightening their excitement. Was a contract with this man really suitable? The check-andbalance system provided by the two houses, much as she resisted it—the slowness especially—had its advantages. Finally a call had come from Tsuruko. “It’s a good thing we took our time,” she began. “It seems that the mother, whom we were told had palsy, is in fact mentally ill. She doesn’t even recognize her own son.” Sachiko understood. A strain of insanity in Segoshi’s blood posed an insurmountable diffculty. He would have to be refused. “There is nothing to be done, Yukiko,” Sachiko consoled her, gently enough. 44 East_Wind_text .indd 44 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �the tiger begins to roam East_Wind_text .indd 45 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 46 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �It is possible that a full understanding of what happened in those few hours on the train to the hot spring would diminish its meaning. And that would be a shame. For Shimamura’s idle life lacked meaning (reading along she knew he knew it—it was some small shred of meaning in search of which he made his solitary trips). It had occurred so unexpectedly, in transit, time usually hazed away. Hindsight, however, and distance had set the incident in bold relief. His frst trip to the snow country had been in the summer. As he left Tokyo, he remembered, his wife had cautioned him that it was egg-laying season for moths. Indeed there were moths—large corncolored ones under the eaves clinging to a decorative lantern. In his dressing room also a queer-looking moth lay motionless, seemingly glued to the screen. Against the crimson glow of the mountain ranges, its gossamer wings futtered in the wind. Transfxed, Shimamura had rubbed his hand vigorously over the inside of the screen. When the moth hadn’t moved, he’d struck the screen with his fst. Sure enough it loosened and, like a leaf, wafted to the ground. On his return (it had been December) he was startled to see the stationmaster’s face stuffed inside a muffer, the faps of his cap turned down over his 47 East_Wind_text .indd 47 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �ears. As soon as the train pulled up at the signal stop, a girl, who had been sitting on the other side of the car, opened the window in Shimamura’s section and called to him loudly. Shimamura found himself unavoidably involved in their conversation, as if some critical piece of drama whose every nuance pertained to him were being acted out for his beneft. Perhaps it was in part the contrast between her beauty and the desolation of the border range that so entranced him. This region of Japan, which he had chosen both for its remoteness and its hot springs (whose geisha, he reasoned, would protect him from excessive loneliness), was reputed to be the snowiest in the world. Throughout the winter, cold winds from Siberia picked up moisture over the Japan Sea and dropped it as snow when they struck the central mountain range. Frozen blankets spread endlessly over the bleak horizon. With little to relieve the monotony, one’s life, hibernal, seemingly divorced from time, might easily sink into an undifferentiated darkness. What registered with Shimamura after the girl drew herself back from the window was not so much the brightness of her voice as the pathos conveyed by it. Her concern apparently was for her brother who, though hardly more than a boy, was living and 48 East_Wind_text .indd 48 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �working in this town. The stationmaster seemed to know them both. Possibly because of the cold, he was trying to cut the conversation short, while the girl, sounding urgent, pressed for details of her brother’s welfare. Shimamura couldn’t tell if she was hurt by the stationmaster’s curtness or simply, in her own excitement, hadn’t noticed it. In either case she had struck him as sad. Was it sadness then that attracted him? When she was seated, his view of her, depending as it did on a combination of the shifting light (both inside and outside the train) and the image of her cast by the partially steamed window-glass, was illusive. From her place, across the aisle and one section removed, she would have had no way of guessing that she was being observed. Even had she happened to glance his way, she could not have seen her own refection and would have no reason to question the behavior of a man who appeared to be staring out the window at the countryside. Since she was diagonally opposite to him, Shimamura knew he could just as easily have looked at her directly. A certain quality in her beauty—starkly cool, ferce, unreal—warned him against this. As if her purpose, karmic and foreboding, was to mirror something in himself that he preferred not to see. 49 East_Wind_text .indd 49 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �Truly odd was his awareness, on the one hand, of the suffering implied by her close connection with her traveling companion, an invalid, someone to whom she seemed mysteriously bound, and on the other, of the fact that his reaction to the two of them was as it would have been to a dreamlike pantomime (the distortion of them produced by the window’s glare indeed lent them an otherworldly quality) rather than as one would expect it to be toward human beings in pain. Her overearnestness—both with the sick man (her constant ministrations—rearranging his scarf and the bottom of his overcoat that slipped open again and again so that even he, Shimamura, grew impatient) as well as earlier with the stationmaster—aroused in his imagination a ritualized fgure from an old romantic tale where powerful feelings were metaphoric rather than an ordinary woman in the throes of anguish. He found it deeply disturbing that this inability (for he had come to consider it a kind of inability, having observed like failures in feeling in himself on numerous previous occasions) was being held up for him to watch. Shimamura continued to peer out the glass. Streaks of red fushed the evening sky casting an eerie shadow over the terrain. Equally eerie and superimposed on his window view of the reddish landscape were the incandescent fgures of the girl and the invalid. The silhouettes, though not motionless, held 50 East_Wind_text .indd 50 1/23/07 11:02:10 PM �their position in the frame created by the window, while the landscape, a kind of unmitigated emotion, droned steadily past them. When he relaxed his gaze, it seemed as if the mountains had been cut off by the outline of the refected forms (progressing around them), but when he made a conscious effort to look, peering into their flmlike shapes, he could see that the vista was actually whizzing through them. It almost stopped his breath, this furtive glimpse of what might be their inner emotional reality. When a light somewhere out in the mountains coruscated in the center of the girl’s face, then moved across her face shooting a single ray through the pupil of her eye, for that moment her eye became a weirdly glowing phosphorescent jewel on a sea of scarlet. Shimamura, mesmerized by the inexpressible beauty of it, came to forget that he was confronting a mirror. The girl’s face and the dim mountains melted together into a symbolic world of opaque coldness. 51 East_Wind_text .indd 51 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 52 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �magpies nest East_Wind_text .indd 53 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 54 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �She didn’t know what she felt reading about Yuji Nakamura, whose bum knee kicked in as he ran the second and longest leg of the 130-mile Hakone Ekiden relay. He’d hobbled and grimaced until his coach fnally said, “You’re out!” His entire squad was disqualifed. His teammates, wearing yellow sashes of dishonor, had run their paces to the end. Fifteen 10-member, all-male squads from Japanese universities compete in the grueling New Year’s Day race. Water is permitted once each relay leg, roughly at 10 kilometers (the halfway point). Millions line the asphalt route from downtown Tokyo to the resort town of Hakone. Millions more watch the race from their homes. While there are no superheroes in the ekiden (a superhuman performance by one runner will not guarantee a win), anyone who lets the team down shoulders an overwhelming responsibility. A runner who gets sick, injured or for any reason fails to complete his “leg” often fnds that the race haunts him forever, ruining his career, even his life. Historical failures are dredged up annually on television and in magazines. Nakamura considered suicide. “I was so sad, had so many regrets and was in shock because I’d done 55 East_Wind_text .indd 55 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �something from which I could never redeem myself,” he’d said. While ekidens are now run all over the world (with races tailored for high schoolers, professional squads and so forth), the Hakone Ekiden, journalists say, borders on the sadistic. One leg is up a paralyzing hill. The next, coming down, is brutal on the knees. Runners battle snow, ice, heavy wind, freezing rain and don’t give up, for there are no substitutions once the race starts. They will kill themselves delivering the tasuki even one second faster. If any runner falls more than 10 minutes behind the leader, the entire team forfeits. A disqualifed team automatically forfeits its berth in the following year’s race. “I must not stop—even if I die,” is the feeling of most runners. Doryoku (effort)—an end in itself—is said to be the ultimate motivation. The philosophy stresses endless training, dedication, team-spirit, obedience and selfsacrifce. Instead of letting athletes quit when they tire, coaches turn up the heat, continuing to drill to the point of exhaustion. “Gambare!” (fght harder) fans scream, cheering runners on. Which ratchets up the pressure. When marathoner Kokichi Tsuburaya won a bronze medal, he apologized for letting his country down. 56 East_Wind_text .indd 56 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �waters and swamps are thick and hard East_Wind_text .indd 57 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 58 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �Reading The Sound of the Mountains by the Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata had brought to her attention the fact that she was more impressionable than she’d thought. The degree to which the characters in the book wrestled inside her—for days a part of her consciousness remained absorbed and distracted—was quite alarming. Shingo, for example, age 62, around whom the story revolved, held the image of a girl, now dead, to whom he was attracted in his youth, closer to his heart than the members of the family he had borne by marrying her considerably less handsome sister. As a result of his passivity, the marriages of both his children were fawed. Even now, as head of the family, he ought to intervene on their behalf, yet time goes by and he does nothing. As wanton acts of his grandchildren caused the death or near death of others, his own part in it shocked and immobilized him. The cumulative effect, for example, of his preference for his son, out-and-out favoring him over his disappointingly homely daughter, pointed an accusing fnger toward him, Shingo, in the lunatic behavior of his daughter’s even homelier offspring. This understanding arose not so much as a thought but as a gradual accretion whittling away at his conscience. For days now, like Shingo, she had felt a mounting disparity between her actions and her confdence. 59 East_Wind_text .indd 59 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �Repercussions of one’s smallest deed, she realized (and can an interchange with another ever be considered small?), reverberate to infnity. There is only one opportunity to exert control, and that is over the initial idea. One must be vigilant about one’s state of mind, and she wondered if she had the energy. “Merely thinking these things does nothing,” she muttered out loud as she straightened the house, fuffng the pillows and emptying the wastebaskets. “That is precisely what Shingo does!” * “The way the human beings carry out each others’ unconscious lives can be staggering,” she mused as she toted a rather light load of groceries home from the grocery store. “Shuichi, for example, newly married to sweet and lovely Kikuko, blatantly goes out on her. Meanwhile, his father, scrupulous even in his dreams about remaining faithful to his homely wife, has longed for her sister, who died at the peak of intense, and, for Shingo, compelling, beauty. It was the sister he had wanted to marry and one supposes that it was the gesture to remain connected with her that after her death he married her less attractive sibling. Even the memories of her that he and Yasuko share Shingo remains silent about. Thus he presents himself as someone who long ago cared, 60 East_Wind_text .indd 60 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �whereas in truth, the image of Yasuko’s beautiful sister is rarely far from his mind. Was it on the altar of the palpable though well-manicured passion of the father that the son sacrifced the fdelity of his own marriage vows, not really understanding this, not really choosing, and not really being chastised by his father, who on some level ‘got’ that this was an enactment of his own unfnished emotional business, however inept and aborted? Kinu, the other woman, of lower class and education, exacted the greatest authority. Helpless though she was to change the misguided circumstances of her husband’s death, when it came to Shuichi, she was pretty much the master, at times fagrantly so.” * It would be easy to criticize Shingo for his procrastination. His wife certainly did. Yet one sees in her very criticism a shortsightedness that is pitiful. Shingo’s paralysis, indeed sometimes it did seem to take these proportions, objectively was inexcusable, yet he had found himself using this very term, paralysis, regarding his son’s moral and emotional life. Shingo, unable to move forward, was at least the more conscientious. With information surging through him at such a pace, immobility was fortitude. Taking action before one is ready forecloses 61 East_Wind_text .indd 61 1/23/07 11:02:11 PM �and thereby stunts. “It can actually be cowardly,” she was thinking out loud. The connection between action and cowardliness (which heretofore she had associated with inaction) startled her. 62 East_Wind_text .indd 62 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 63 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM �East Wind Melts the Ice & Other Stories was set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and frst issued in digital form by Adobe Systems, Mountain View, California, in 1989. Typesetting & production: Claudia Smelser. Printing & binding: Lightning Source, Inc. East_Wind_text .indd 64 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 65 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 66 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 67 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 68 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 69 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM �East_Wind_text .indd 70 1/23/07 11:02:12 PM � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource East wind melts the ice & other stories Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. East wind melts the ice and other stories Description An account of the resource Re-tellings of narrative fragments from modern Japanese literature and journalism by a contemporary American poet. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2007 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 972611568 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_007 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Author’s Note East Wind Melts the Ice Doves Spread Their Wings Earthworms Come Out The Butcherbird is Silent The Eaglehawk Studies and Learns Swallows Return Bu rrowing Beetles Wall Up Their Doors with Earth The Tiger Begins to Roam Magpies Nest Waters and Swamps are Thick and Hard Extent The size or duration of the resource. 80 p Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/d38c970e37f79f798da81aee906cef20.pdf 132b2cdbd115b5eca74075d8edfbcfc5 PDF Text Text though actually it is the same earth �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 poetry The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Coper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �though actually it is the same earth Gail Sher Q night crane press 2008 �Copyright 2008, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978–0-9794721-4-5 �For Brendan ��order of dreams Rat 1 Cow 9 Tiger 19 Hare 27 Dragon 35 Snake 43 Horse 51 Sheep 59 Monkey 67 Bird 75 Dog 87 Pig 95 ��Rat ��Rat Dream An old woman is born. Her hair dries and her mother thinks, I have been her mother again. Might the woman’s nature leave? Rats scurry from baskets, which are old baskets, hexagonal fields. A night bird sleeps. Its dreams are down to its feet. Which you say is the bird’s body before the skill of the bird’s body. Its wings lay flat in the smell of new grass. 3 �Commentary A quality of him, home words say, is the same as the man speaking. I already have that person, I think because his blood is smooth also. My blood is smooth also. A person moves, effortfully or effortlessly, and she thinks, Is this a waste or not? She thinks it is bliss but thinks it is her feeling bliss. 4 �Is filigree air, like in the rats’ playpen? What can hold between a feeling and a queer girl child whose boots tips curl in shame? I am really talking about rifts, what holds between her fear and the rats’ miserable-life fragility. There would be an object connected to my playing, like saying playing, as though words are desire. The likelihood of death browsing itself into my death could occur and I think, O yes. It is death! 5 �Each word has a flower. The times of the flowers converge so that she conflates words and flowers, speaking flowers. Pansies in sun beneath the red breast of a robin, here and there, merge with the robin’s legs. A duck in scattered ripples darkens. Snow falls, resting in a petal’s shell. An infant puts a flower in its mouth. The muscles of its mouth move by the flower’s warmth. 6 �Rats kneel to her and in her mind become true rats. The weight of the snow is heavier than words, heavier than stone, she marvels. Is the Christ child born of air, through holes in the air? For the blood on snow is real transferred blood, alive in the mind of the boy. The beauty of a rat depends from its limbs. Snow folds and the boy becomes its eyes. 7 ��Cow 9 ��Cow Dream A double flower begins in the folds of an infant’s hands. If you see its face, which is the fruition of your knowing, it may be a small, infinitesimal aspect of knowing. The fetus is standing, someone says. She imagines her hands under its armpits. She spreads it on leaves, which look like artist’s hands. Wrapping purple leafy fingers around its bits of unborn life, she climbs a person inside the lark’s mouth. 11 �The fetus shines and she takes it to school. The forest is ill, she says. Anything tall makes my blood quiet. A series of events moves in one direction only, like trees taller than sky. A woman sees a bird and thinks something about its eyes. A clean, fresh feeling becomes that feeling regardless of her initial sense of affection for the bird. Roots are veins ripening in her body though still hot as coal. This is why a bird’s cool blood is the most delightful fowl quality. 12 �Commentary In the ether of white my baby fumigates. The flavor of her skin holding a flower to her nose. Each particle is a bud and inside the bud’s head. Flower and water are protectors, with the net feeling of white, as if a lotus absolves its entire color into her. I made my baby backwards, I say. I am trying to remember if the long lowered arm vibrates. 13 �Trying to recall time, my baby, offing of morning fields. Young rocks sit like cows in sovereign pasture squares. Or you may instantly be the baby’s wisdom mother, the stronghold of you and your baby going somewhere pretty. A spider’s thin web zigzags into sky, whereupon the sky’s dimensions shift. 14 �If you appear, my image of you shifts. Not having readiness for a person shifts the mind in which the potential person exists. Which shifts the language creating that person. I translate you to being in and out of your presence and the translation is like your presence within the boundary of a word. When you appear, the interior land shifts making sounds like stones. A spider’s thin web zigzags into sky, whereupon the sky’s dimensions shift. 15 �Later you say, a spider drowned, juxtaposing your seeing with what you recall. But one imagines tall black trees or a cow that hangs in privy to the cow. If I see the cow with you, but if I see the cow alone, we have to know where it exists. If a cow eats air, the air still exists. 16 �Each and every cow jumps over the moon properly. Meaning is the experience of one cow, before dawn, slowly traversing the earth. A falling star holds up the whole earth, so that its drop is a pin-prick against water or color. It is my mother born from my body, I’m thinking, while at the same time seeing faces of other relatives. 17 ��Tiger 19 ��Tiger Dream Sun from behind the mountain falling on the threshers and reflecting from the lake gains depth from the sound of falling. The sound of water over stones at the lake’s edge is like a darting bird. If she wakes, she couldn’t say the bird disappears, but its breath dissolves, like an undertow at sea. How igneous (fiery) and lucid are the bodies of tigers, she muses. 21 �Commentary Each day the sun slips over the crest of the hill and lights the yellow grass. A cat climbs the hill as though dawn were in its head, entwining pieces (petals in branches). A day-moon slides below low tide. Fall-out from one’s skin protects it from further harm. Tide emits tide as she wanders down the coast, empty as a battered jug. 22 �A woman carries a jug dexterously embroidered on silk. The woman’s skin shines like the interior pink of a river. The dimensions of the jug’s magenta is implicit yet exacting. Out is not a direction but an aspect of conference around the jug’s battered aggregates. Bringing yellow out, where out is a structure of color and light, intensifies out, as if its DNA changes. 23 �There is an hour in which her memory will be there, where light falls in rain on a tiger’s flickering head. A stone woman prays, hearing sun in sun. (She dreams its precise nest.) A magenta flower glows so that I feel free at last. A magenta flower glows, disappearing in its skin. Light jumps back as if she has that person again. 24 �Death is color-added-to-color. Color learns color by touch, like the feel of rain from one’s bed. What if the occurrence of harm refers to the difficulties of offering the harm? In the broad space of an animal, a wound in a woman’s thumb feels like embroidery of jasmine and honeysuckle. The necessity of something and its form is the tiger sleeping, tail to tail, in tandem with something. 25 ��Hare 27 ��Hare Dream An angel glides silently through air to where the child Christ sleeps. He sees her as a crow, wings folded, watching. A blue flower in the wing of a bird hovering near the birth, is not in the bird, since it fluctuates in light, while the bird remains unchanged. In my mind there is a bed where I drop off. Christ and hare both slip through my mind and land where a hare might or where someone needs something. 29 �Commentary The bird whose markings fluctuate remains unchanged independent of its visibility. Yet her girlishness has continuity. Limbs jumbled in the corner are still free limbs, I’m thinking. All the animals are resting. I know them from the inside as if they have said, and their word is a death-rattle. A golden crow or laughter is said to be a paradigm of activity then. 30 �So there are words, then under-words. Black words like a river so that her thoughts, pummeled, are the hard thoughts of stone people. They burn a branch of all their people, then turn to ash. Am I the person? I am the person. I decide I must be the person. 31 �While a glistening star holds night within its skin, a twinkling star has no interior where night can sit. So she lays with the animals whose foreheads quiver. So many ducks and goats being causes, songs where voices are tongues. Sweet air sweeps the ragged flowers. Sweet air sweeps her hair. (Winnowing its hair is also an object.) 32 �The beauty of the straw in the wake of a bird flown away. As if the whole world encased in shadowbrought-to-bear-upon-a-field stops the straw in time. I’m thinking time occurs separate from the straw, beside the straw, and in its looseness is neither created nor destroyed. Seeing something against time, as if time were oldfashioned. A shoe, for example, is eligible to loss. To be dead again, in the simplicity of its skin. I hear a leaf and think it is in the well, so we are together. 33 ��Dragon 35 ��Dragon Dream It is just beyond her body to sleep with him. It is just beyond her body not to sleep with him. This is the moral of a little play. There is a lodge. A young girl is invited into the main room. She is black with very bushy hair, dressed in a silver princess costume, carrying a wand. She comes in and behaves very sweetly to a guest but her parents think she is faking her sweetness and really being sassy so they ask her to leave and come in again, this time being genuinely sweet. So she comes in again behaving slightly differently. Each of the two times signifies a different moral. 37 �Commentary A doll talks and if she’s a tall doll, in dependence on a listener, her presence will not disperse far. Her body covers her life as if it were a cast. Mop-like braids fall to her waist. If I were a Cyclops forging thunderbolts, I too would be being born she posits. A man binds his mind so that it doesn’t scatter. He tucks it between his breasts. How have you left your mind before? someone asks, speaking politely. 38 �After long rain a man leans on a gate. Hair-thin legs race along the rim. A disappearing chirp has appearance, like its body is young yet forever carried in its old mother’s womb. For her presence gives also. Her feet and ears also. She grabs her limb dangling in the breeze like a cocoon. 39 �Cobwebs in sun are strings of pure time dangling in a breeze. Cobwebs in shade land, decrepit before time, cave into time. Part goes up. So that time feels like war. Another portion rolls into air—holding air, lighting day back. 40 �A whoosh of wings feels like an effigy, some sort of charcoal beast fluffing its feathers, eating sky with upturned beak. If what is visible close by is remote, vast visibility, I inhabit my thoughts more fully. Inside is a stage whereas outside is somatic. A great slaughter of beings is contained within their death. As if a holocaust is found, as if future beings trip. Sky washes sky as I watch a dragon fade, wings rubbed by sky’s shadows. 41 ��Snake 43 ��Snake Dream A woman seeing an animal sees it belly-to-earth raised above the earth so that it floats on a small peninsula. A python, like a bladder, coagulates the sludge, eating so much sludge. Light from its eyes shoot out little tails of fire and she wonders why its death seems so friendly. It dies on the highway ’cause it’s slow, someone says, thinking of sand. It vanishes in squares, as if striations of sunlight are old. 45 �Commentary My mother is dead. How could she have forgotten her shoe? (A hazy memory of a dream where I’m a colorful bird’s tail.) She sees the bird hop and its hop disappears into the tail of the bird, into the tails of her children. Here is a whole bird, she thinks, its tail discrete like a discrete word. If one dies, among birds, a red-winged bird is heavier in its body then. 46 �Caught in her own heirloom of light, a woman sleeps in distension of moments that appear to be there. Old birds swarm. Quadrilles of people (fitting the crate around the edges of her body). Immersing herself in a log. Some say she is that thing, as if she hops inside it. Mother, I am blind, I say. Your pink toes reveal nothing any more. 47 �A yellow fowl touches logs contingent with animals who knew the logs as sky. Of previous people drawn on the backs of stooped women. She felt she was that woman. That her yellow earth bloomed in the night oil. Afterwards there are leap years then. Like fields of potatoes. A child hops, square to square, with her own convergent yellowness. 48 �The emotion of yellow, say in meat or chirps. The same level of color in the blank place of sky is like borders in sky mirroring the bottom of her eyes. Is it painted? a child asks. Her sewn face has alterity and depth. Pink is here and you are sure of the color. Before being born, grass is this color. To bring back sky, it pulls the sky so that sky folds comfortably over everybody. 49 ��Horse 51 ��Horse Dream Where is day? someone asks, and I see the twin nature of black, oil of black, mountains stark and wet. Pearls seem brown like the bottom of the sea. I whisper something and the animal’s ear flicks. So she lets her leg give this impression, a pearl in the dark, in the blue of its stomach’s shell. The mare’s perch is illuminated because blood and ecstasy are to birth like an underlying river. 53 �Air rushes in, steadying my mind. Your words are my mother, I’m thinking. Long legs curl around a shriveled coil of knees. An insect wanders off. It’s a baby I see and my heart breaks for its infinite slow old non-knowing of direction. Just get through the line. Get to the yellow snow. To the bridge where you can puke. There. To cut yourself out. 54 �Commentary The sky frames your face and all the different skies. You’re the crow against the sky or quadrants of an insect’s shell from the perspective of sky. The place of you is like the essence of your eyes. So you’re blind, sort of, and another person sees the tension of that space, the acoustic opacity in that space. 55 �She may know a sound but if she turns, it becomes a measure of far and near distance. I wear sound, someone says. (The slimy pearls are the physical sensation of womb.) The woman’s space, lighted by sagebrush, transcends the confines of a life, though it can pull life toward it without abrading its transcendence. She wants it to be white, like space in a word’s world. 56 �Pearls are steam. The lug of its knee or inside the beast’s thigh. She may see blossoms, a sprig, or she may see pearls as old mothers marching. The blue horseman is blue light, though we’re, through it, seeing death. On a bodice is a pony, which drips into me, until things become small, but they still die. 57 �Watching-minds twist to a cumulative suicide. A windhorse flies but it is still still, asking me. My daughter is young. I see her climb inside the windhorse, her long fore-fingernail painted with geese. I determine to seek them, over the hedge, inside the parts where it hurts the most. They only read lips in the blinding darkness, cries a priest from behind a screen. 58 �Sheep 59 ��Sheep Dream I have a memory of green, in a hole, in a moon’s crater called the bottom of the pitcher. A woman fills the hole with crenellated wings. I admire the wings so she cuts off a piece and hands it to me. A man’s voice held anterior to its space makes his presence real. I’m not cold, someone says. Is cold an image like young sea blossoms, purple flowers just above eye level? 61 �Commentary I recall seeing myself in a dream with the sensation of something touching my toe-bottoms. The dream includes a variety of skin sizes. Certain shapes whose edges contain sky, I clearly remember in my hand. The skin of a lamb is irreducible, like the skin of day bound by fleshy rock and sand. A day may not be prior to itself, happening alongside each and every event of breath. 62 �Shells on the cowboy’s coral hat are new surprising shells, shiny, polished, with no sea showing. I forget the boundary of possible seashells while holding the thought of their appearing in my spine. An appearance occurs against an old barn door. All stags as they are burnished beat their heads dry against some tree or other. The parity of their body is the parity of voicelessness. 63 �Flinging off his gossamer, hanging it up to dry, dancing about the pan, drinking the pan. The memory of the color green is tinged with repeated time like little beats with a glove. So I learn green. Whose solemnity is sky (view as, say, sky). I look at green and become an old woman. 64 �I chew green and the rich saliva gifted by him. Is a tenet of color, a primer once left off. As if the person were a taste congealing inside her very own wisdom. I drift within its skin, an opaque membrane of light, allowing pale color to metastasize. 65 ��Monkey 67 ��Monkey Dream A flesh-colored pear is with the heaviness of birth. I look into its head wanting an immaculate black stick. The pear tree has birds arranged in its branches artistically. Here are flowering birds, whose trees spin into air, her feeling for the blossoms, sharp as thaw. Monkeys race, seemingly, though it could be bones rolling and disappearing. 69 �Commentary How the weight of a bird hopping along a fence, a tiny bird new to appearing, not yet carrying the birdness of its mother. The more anchored the mind, the more an appearance weighs nothing. Light is bone. Think recumbent, dead-seeming, like an animal playing but really guarding beings. Fossilized wings show the giant wingspan of an early species. 70 �If a bird eats a worm or if it turns its head, an animal sniffs age, sees age in the pattern of its feathers’ colors. Cells of color leak, wandering over the wing’s rough neck. The flesh of the bird appears in its hop, its last place of hop, what’s possible before lifting off. An animal gauges the belly of the hop trying to determine the feasibility of killing its hop’s dark past. 71 �A young bird stares and something birdlike travels upwards. A mud-colored bird blurs into mud throbbing there in her mind asleep. You could say she wears feathers and the feathers unfold like a resplendent bird catching its reflection in sky. You could say there are rivers, battalions of orange light. A child spears light, ravishing light laid out as in death. 72 �Seeing the feather of the bird through a branch in noon sun, one remains in the bird and is swung, like through an opening in sky. So that there is both the bird, belly like an urn, and the bird so saturated with birdness that it is unseen against its own background. A group of feathers on the same bird, for example, are separate and distinct yet we think of them as the bird’s feathers. The arm of the bird is crooked. In skinniness in sky. Distance is its face in the resting sky. 73 ��Bird 75 ��Bird Dream Three birds move in air as blue as water in a dream. Three branch-colored birds land on a branch in the borderland of the bird’s robe. Behind the songs of birds he fingers a chip. Is it thin? Without the chip’s color? Seeing its form as a bird, first eagerly then angrily, the way beauty through a gap in sky breaks into two whole containers of sky. 77 �Commentary i An ebony feather shines, its blackness steely, like the hard black knuckle of a bird. A discarded feather, arched like a fish, rests on the earth, its magnificent bow gleaming. Sun-black birds hover over sea, so that black is both inside and the holder of itself. Or like sea repairs to sea, wraps bird and sea into something apocryphal. 78 �The time of the bird is ideal, you say, by which you mean supremely excellent time and I think, Are time’s qualities measurable? If it were touchable, the parts of a person might organize around it, like one’s senses congeal around a smell. Bird clouds drift. Sky too seems to be drifting but it is still, I assure myself. I am comforted thinking the sky is still. 79 �Time enters the wing of a bird where the colors break between blue and very dark blue. An animal waits allowing time to sway between its belly and inhabited spot on earth. It limps, she thinks, though it is a genuine limp, with each and every particle of limp belonging to it specifically. In a certain angle of sun she is able to see the limp passing to a future animal at a similar spot on the hill. 80 �Are the birds girls? The impact of sound makes slowness material while its direction is immaterial. Saying it is less like looking than a cloven foot with little clea’s or talons. And maybe she is that or maybe her body is simply the thought of a bird-filled body. Later I dream the three birds are crying. Fingers of hair blow with the wind, my mind observes, referring of course to the talons. 81 �Commentary ii Three bird’s bodies whose bones are like a forest. You know its color from the pure knowledge of color, without seeing its precise color. Lines of light catch the bird. The motility of light critiques the contours of the bird’s beak. Part of the air surrounds a branch where three birds rest. Rays of light touch your back, which, if I touch you then, evaporate. As if the boundary of your back were hidden by your back, but nonetheless yellow, like light in a dream person. 82 �The profile of a bird, in a gold ball rising, shapes a mountain called bird mountain. A crow erupts, turning gold turning curves. I cannot tell a crow from the image of gold feathers somersaulting. The bird’s dream arises from the ground of its own birdness. First moonlight on rushing water, then pink stars like angels, then tree tips in a treacle bar of sky, threading itself through the birds’ raised mouths, beaks pressed apart like lips. A thin sun crawls to earth and is maintained by strong earth, though actually it is the same earth. 83 �How a beaver floats under sky-words. He hears the birds as if gathered together verbally. An end-bird leaves its formation over water. Its blue bowl leaves, rising in sky. Which somehow was known, the way a line is known as beginning here, though, as you say, lines are concepts. How many meanings flow from the bowl into heads that look away? 84 �The robin’s breast is red, you think, yet you are unsure and think maybe it’s a color that contains red but is not red. Caring is present though you cannot find it in the bird’s body. An insect the bird eats enters the bird’s blood. Is its time the same? Likely not, she thinks, since an insect eats and the food slips away. A dragonfly on cloth (conspicuously beautiful) devolves into your eyebrows. 85 ��Dog 87 ��Dog Dream I walk into a meadow and all the dogs’ mouths open. Presences are out who remain unseen and may instantly slip inside. A witch flies out but it is just a stick. Mommy, it’s just a stick! a child cries. A woman tells about her smelling, it being equal to a dog’s when she was pregnant. Crickets chirp in a field of rabid ones. Their intervals are pure, like the pure white flaps that poke from a new bird’s tail. 89 �If a dog is my interior ash force, it romps the hills with butterflies sitting there placidly. If it yawns, behind its tongue are beings sucking flowers, looking like black ghosts. Behind its tongue a world of beings cook. Its unconscious is preserving food, you say, but I think it’s making speech, readying itself for a life. A string of dogs hangs in sky. Daughters of sky gather cobs. Hussies also wear cobs. 90 �Commentary A dog in grass hears a young bird chirp and inches towards it. Hearing, but not seeing, one bird, then a group, early, as if the sky were nothing. Or as if the sky were intelligence, like a presence that the birds knew about, but if you looked there’d be nothing. Another offers food, but I am offering something more gentle, she says. The dog’s belly is in the grass but its ears are inside the hill. 91 �Each day a dog returns to its spot on the hill. Its body rests but its eyes are vagrant. (By vagrant I mean slim—the eyes of a crow on a wire in rain staring at wet grass.) Rain gathers above low hills, like rain in a painting stays mixed here. Like the footprint of the doll, once left in a storm, has neither situation nor destination. Five children laughing pull grass to the river. The air around it blurs, emerging from weather. 92 �A bird and dog move, appropriate to pleatless rivers of air. A bird and dog sit, appropriate to the posture of all birds and dogs, which is genuinely sweet, she guesses. The time of the bird is not the dog’s minute-tominute watching, though the bird hunts from the sides of its eyes. A dog has parts, which each have times, so that a melody of time pervades its movements and posture. 93 �Posture, too, is a way the idea of an act is projected. If it is blue there is a door so you enter the posture, though the light in blue might leave you suddenly. The dimensions of a star are not of a star’s body but are fixed in her, displaced by her movements. She moves and the star achieves its posture. 94 �Pig 95 ��Pig Dream A longshoreman sees night. He looks at his hand. As if night or water or distance were simply depths for the color blue. As if night were still night only very far away. The appearance of the color and its instant of apprehension is nothing more than an action. Before the action the color doesn’t exist. Where does aqua go? she wonders hearing flowers falling, falling where they adhere, into a world of tea. 97 �Commentary I am today again. I fall within time, tall time in a frame of tall pieces of color. A bird’s red wing releases the inside of its color. I look inside. If blue were there, its wing wouldn’t exist. A teapot’s rhythms are cascades of water falling and I imagine that I too am falling, in strands, like a geisha’s hair. Is it the lines or the openings where things recede, emptying themselves out? 98 �Being moved she falls and I’m thinking it’s a young, fluid sort of fall. But air is internal, she thinks. O mother of sky lugging me forward. You break off but I catch you. A voice through fog portends the precise ominous chartreuse where your eyes look out. 99 �When you see blossoms causing a two or three dimensional image to form in space, your eye opens to that space. Space, she thinks, exists, crosses back from where the person was alive. A bloody bird from the beak of a hawk clicks the nature of night. Its cry is her face clothed as a human bird. The blue of a cross pinned to the mountain. 100 �Thoughts divide into lineages of translucency, sun-dazzling corruscancy. I define grow passively. I point to a flower and say, That is a growing flower, unlike its shadow spidering sideways. Now she belongs to an infantry of animals. Packs of pigs form cover near the kraals. For example, a girl thinks the hog, but tells her mother to draw the hog. 101 �����������though actually it is the same earth is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Though actually it is the same earth Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2008 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 979472180 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_006 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Rat Cow Tiger Hare Dragon Snake Horse Sheep Monkey Bird Dog Pig Extent The size or duration of the resource. 120 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/a4f18e7039598a914b4a48e3de60bf68.pdf f4d068f9ce22990c1f3cdb735807a184 PDF Text Text D OHA- Doha- (Tibetan): devotional song of experience and realization from the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition of Tibet. Doha-s are meant to “reveal the inner nature of the singer and express her insights and devotion in an uninhibited and unique fashion.” �also by gail sher Prose The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �DOHA GAIL SHER Q night crane press 2005 �Copyright 2005, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 The text of this book was set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach, first issued in digital form by Adobe Systems, Mountain View, California, in 1989. Typesetting and production: Claudia Smelser, Berkeley, California. Printing and binding: Lightning Source, Inc., LaVergne, Tennessee. No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN: 0–9726115–6–8 �For Brendan ��To My Lama a d z o m pay l o r i n p o c h e For His Unfathomable Kindness Bestow on me your transforming powers To realize quickly the way-things-are. To understand images viewed by the mind Merely as paintings, created by the mind. ��contents Trilogy of Being at Ease 1 At the Snow Mountain of Tö 23 Pigeon of the Mysterious Tree 53 Dawn Mountain 73 Mingling the Threefold Sky 87 a ho a la la ho! Pleasing Playsong I Offer 117 Twelve Kinds of Vajra Laughter 133 ix ��t r i l o g y o f b e i n g at e a s e ��September dawn. I shiver in my blankets. Chamois stems of mustard seed the morning field. Wet earth seethes. Its creatures remain inside. Formations peer through vast bleak space. 3 �Brambles supplicate trees (imbibe their essence). For gods camp in such structures routinely. Each one in its architecture of remittance. Cliffs, clouds, leaves, settle in a pool of haze. 4 �Dawn suggests dawn, other dawns, long past. For time is cavernous at first watch. The hill waits. Birds wait. Gnarly roots accede to delay with grace. My hoya’s waxy flowers fall. Wind gently whisks them away. 5 �A squirrel darts, quivers. What is it sensing? Blue-birds softly moan. The slumbering sky, dead white (pocky). Except for the squirrel, all is still. 6 �* Fruit of the hill (seeding the hill) this ocean morning is vast. Yellow-headed stalks fan the banks of mud. Mist from the night hovers in the trees. I watch sweet dawn get caught. 7 �Of the wind I am jealous. I wish also to swish across the sod. The great plateau, barren and cold, eking its bit of grass. I too want to swallow air, swirl, tumble over each diamond-mind crest. 8 �The seahorse sounds of silver-blue plants. From before-time, its subtle moan. Brambles, reeds, the sad loon’s nightly weeping. Behold! I am everywhere. This makes sense. Every day we do a little bit of wrong. A flower blooms to its full height of beauty, over and over and over. 9 �Hear the conch. Limit not your footsteps. Dazzling reefs, shimmering shells, bedeck and hale their passionate primacy. I offer sweet buttered cheeses, lengths of soft white felt, the skin of a krishnasara antelope. Drifting in this house of froth, my lama reveals yet another treasure. 10 �* Gray-green air soaks the sleepy grass. One dog prowls a narrow chilly street. I and my tablet cozy up by a fire. As I watch the browning dawn fan the nearby hill, a feeling of sadness arises. 11 �For what, I wonder. A forest bird chirps. A bell tolls the hour. Six stern gongs. “Are you attending?” they ask. “It’s important. Pray at once!” 12 �Earth overflows. That’s what day breaks. Do you understand? (Many die confused.) Wandering through the bardo, the endless preserving of fat. I stare at the heavens just now cracked. Where in me is the vision of the great ones? 13 �Centuries ago the sages spoke of decadence. “The pattern has vanished from the skins of tiger heroes,” they said. Now, myrtle, lily, tulips call the guru from afar. Like the reflection of a moon in water, several easily can appear in the same pool. 14 �* Morning buzzes from a dank, cold sky, the sound of dawn, a trilogy. A lone owl hoots. Coo coo coo. Into this huge vault I pour jasmine and pearl (all things white like an ocean of joy). Garlands of rose dangle in the current. 15 �See the underwater fountain-tree plump with fruit, supple and ripe. Whereby my lama smiles. He planted this ancient seed. Within each face he recognizes himself. Swish swish across his vajra throne, his immense white words spill silence. 16 �Take it in. Take it in. Wisdom is but wind swishing through our skull. We humans are special—arise (dissolve) at will. We waft and want from any Pure Land we want. 17 �Ominous clouds suffuse the wooly morning. A robin hovers in a branch, methodically scanning the sea. “It’s inhaling radiant light, exhaling ignorance, as if practicing the Nine Sacred Breaths,” I mutter. I watch for a long time. 18 �* Winter bird. You scurry from your twig. Without a sound. No peeps. No chirps. Freshets are cold. Meadowlands barren. Not one flower shows its laughing face. 19 �Mangy packs nose the refuse. Stillness floats the mind-stream of daybreak’s eternal nostalgia. Later, when the sun is high, heat saturates the void. But as morning opens, this hollow bowl beckons thoughts of former years. 20 �Sky stops. Skimpy air freezes. Mizzle swells the parched wild grass. Pale light seeps through reeds where a Buddha sits under low-lying fronds. Drip drop drip. 21 �Cheer-ip cheer-ip, it says, perkily throbbing the tip of its branch. About to fly, it teeters, stops, then suddenly becomes a cloud. A pack of clouds sail to the west, over the sea, to other dawning days. I am bereft. For a minute I feel quite alone. 22 �at t h e s n o w m o u n ta i n o f t ö ��Flowers quake in the still, cold dawn. Mist, like wool, powders their faces. The sound of day stirs me. (It mauls the silence of night.) Bruised by wind, it reeks the odor of limp, dead bodies. 25 �Dawn divides (day divides). Quickening light bursts through trees. Birds sing and branches become clowns. The hoot of an owl returns me to my mind, which, for a moment, has wandered. Having contact with no one, I practice in pleasant solitudes. 26 �Of myself I make a stupa. I put a life tree in the center, cutting it square, the same way it grew in the wild. On it I write prayers and attach relics (such as I have). Would that I could place dharma wheels at its top. surmounted by a crescent moon and sun like those at the summit of the Great Stupa of Bodhnath. 27 �The face of my mother arises. For weeks she’s been haggard (tired). Suddenly random people remark, “You look so young! Your bronze cheeks shine!” She moves as one who lives alone with the blissgone body of a sugata. 28 �* Day is here, but sun . . . “Where are you sun?” Fog covers the hill, hovering like an umbrella. Birds subdued. Cats, squirrels, deer, all hidden. From upstairs a radio blares. My neighbor yaks away. 29 �Treetops burst. Light droops above the crest. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz purrs the land. Birds seek cover. Gray formations drift. (Cheep cheep cheep from a flatbed of fen.) “What might be the mind of Chöd,” I ask as the sky turns pink. 30 �My hoya sings! (Its sweetness is my lama’s.) We shake minds, laughing (sobbing) hilariously. “Lend me your boots,” I say to it cryptically. “Hum me your sutra,” it replies in a teasing fashion. In summer, when it’s dry, I sweeten my lips with water, knowing that its lips (leaves and flowers) will sip to fruition. 31 �Dregs of night soak into the hill. Green, yellow, blue, they vividly paint the land. “From where does morning arise?” I inquire, peering through the haze. Funny. Sometimes at dawn I am filled with memories. At others (mind relatively passive) strange sensations spread to my heart. 32 �* When Jetsun Mila bends his right ear forward, he attunes to our great agony. Through fingers and toes he breathes. His cotton rags are not precious. His tresses are long. His weathered skin green. What is he doing on this swastika of rushes looking concerned? 33 �Singing, yes. A hundred-thousand verses. They curl like jewels (amulets of thorn). Sifting through clouds, clear-mind of enlightened existence. The Aum of creation (through which we continually regenerate) arises from his astonishing way of knowing. 34 �A wonderland of color wraps desert, valley, plain. Bird-kings by the hords, are gathering, preening, feasting. A coarse jay calls. Ineluctable its grace. Even now, as I remember, I feel joyful. 35 �The swarm, the maze, the miraculous accumulation of voices. “Break the era of ignorance,” they cry. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. They tap the source of His vast ocean-body. Which is our ocean-body, and the ocean-body of our endlessly kind mothers. 36 �* Brilliant sun, high in the sky. It appears to my meditative mind one day at the beginning of spring. I am out on a hill listening to grass. In a cavernous sea, dragon clouds lick one another. 37 �Fiery embers soothed by tongues. (I know that dragons spit hot red flames.) Squawk squawk squawk, my lama shrieks. (He takes the form of a blue-headed jay.) In myself I see my mother’s face. Her eyes peer from these bangs. Her bride-white dress is soiled by time, my time (eons) of endless infinite mothers. 38 �Is she tired? (She is perched aloft a portraiture chair.) “Sit still, lovely.” The cameraman’s head is one black box. A bird chirps. It’s poised to fly away. As when emerging from a narrow gorge onto a high, wide mountain pass, I savor the view of its evenness. 39 �Evergreens with cones, reeds with yellow flowers, all are ripe and cheerful. Yet I, in the day’s auspicious light, feel weary. The ardent limbs of my hoya drop rich purple fruit. A hummingbird pauses (almost tipping itself over). “Hey there, bird!” My hoya bows ever so slightly toward it. 40 �* The air is brisk, sun tinged with orange. One dazzling ray drains across the bluff. Through whose intelligence wraiths of bountifulness speak. “What do they say?” 41 �“We are empty. We rejoice.” (Peels of lightness ring.) Their silence is weighty. Even heady. I chant the hill’s full liturgy, carefully pronouncing each rapturous Sanskrit syllable. Ah ahh, I ii, U u, Ri rii, over and over and over. 42 �Shivering reeds. You have been my mothers, exceedingly kind, protective of me always. Glistening flower, butterfly, bee, waxy petals that fall. A bushy-tailed squirrel surpasses thousands of yojanas. I look out on the bluff. It is brown and quiet. Lama, hear me. Kind root lama. 43 �For faith makes room for magic. “There’s something rolling inside that statue,” I think. Sure enough, when I pry off the metal base, I find a pure white ringsel the size of a large pea. Adamantine glistens on the sides of the Buddha where this beguiling sphere “grows.” 44 �* The echo of the sea slips away. Mother (mother) please don’t go! We will never meet again. This will have been our only meeting. These words slip (slap) over my ears, endlessly. 45 �To excoriate the stars, I scream. To placate clouds, I wail. Clearing my throat, I chant a hundred thousand mantras. In this way my craving dissolves. 46 �The child knows. It wants (it wants) beyond its mother’s understanding. For himself (as he is) in the infinite swirl of motion. What would you like, dear? He can’t be consoled. (She, beside herself with worry.) Finally the child rocks himself to sleep. He dreams. Above a large blue lake soars a royal white eagle. 47 �Longing for her, I listen to a loon. Can its midnight cry be sadder? I (transfixed) under blossoms radiant with dew. In a pleasant ascesis bow and hum the Heart Sutra. 48 �* Again my mother’s face, rotund and gloomy, rises above my dresser. “Daughter,” she says, “are you paying attention to what is important?” I look up. (I had been reading in a chair.) Her floating face does not surprise me. “Sweet one, I wander. I’m continuously tossed among the wiles of the six realms.” 49 �“You disappoint me,” she continues. Her hair, in disarray, shoots from her skull, yellow and moldy. Alarmed, I look more closely. Her skin is mottled. Splotches of rouge smear her cheeks. She wears lipstick as usual, but it’s purple and forms a false (exaggerated) smile. “Have I ever told you how much your mothering means to me?” I wail. 50 �At that moment, a dragon alights on the ground, drinks some water and rises to the sky. We watch in awe. “Extraordinary!” we cry. “I’ve heard the rumbling of the turquoise dragon, but I never thought I’d see it,” she says. “I’ve heard the fame of the Precious Protector, but I never imagined I would meet him,” she repeats. 51 �Next night I dream: Palace of the eight great nagas, Playground of mamos and dakinis, Gathering place of the god who take delight in virtue, Growing place of the Rose-apple Tree. Source of the four great rivers— Here is the turquoise lake, Manasarovar! Excited, I think, “This place is so familiar.” But it vanishes in black-eyed morning. 52 �pigeon of the myster ious tree ��“The sun is warm, the water excellent at Horse Tooth White Rock.” (I am reading The Life of Milarepa.) “The yellow valley is broad and blanketed with flowers,” he says. “Two rivers flow across it softly (softly).” “Green slopes, cool leafy shades—of all secluded places, this is the most pleasant.” 55 �“After about a year, some out-of-luck hunters barge into my cave. ‘It’s a ghost!’ they cry when they see me.” “‘I’m a hermit,’ I yell as they run away.” “They rush back. ‘Where is your food? Give it to us. If you refuse, we’ll kill you.’” “‘I have nothing but nettles. Lift me up and see.’” 56 �“‘What would happen if we tried it?’ one ventures. ‘It might bring a blessing,’ a second suggests.” “One of the hunters who has stood by without hurting me, says, ‘Wait! This man seems to be a real seeker. Even if he were not, you do not prove your manhood by harassing such a bag of bones.’” “He turns to me, ‘Please put me under your protection.’” “‘There are different kinds of protection, believe me,’ remarks the first and bursts out laughing.” 57 �“A year passes. ‘It’s a ghost!’ This time the hunters are laden with game.” “‘There are no ghosts in the daytime,’ one proffers. ‘Take a good look. Is it still there?’” “‘I’m not a ghost. I’m a hermit,’ I explain.” “Though I have no clothes and little nourishment, when I place the scroll my lama has given me on top of my head, my stomach feels full and there is a pleasant taste of food in my mouth.” 58 �* CAW CAW CAW. A jay swoops by. Three white blossoms bend in its wake. I peer through night. Moonless sky hovers over trees. I am aroused (having just finished The Tale of Red Rock Jewel Valley). 59 �“Today’s shabby sky (the heavens are toppled).” “They’re split. (At war.) Sun can’t get through.” “Autumn ends. Seals line the rocks.” “In bitter cold, all the animals hide.” 60 �“Are you a ghost?” “Out of the wool and goat hair cloth my sister weaves I sew a hood for my head, a sleeve for each extremity and a sheath for my penis,” Mila reports. “‘Look at him! My brother has nothing human left!’ Peta screams at the sight.” “Not only is he completely without shame, but he has ruined the cloth that I made with such labor.” 61 �“Father, look at that fantastic thing! A man flying through the air!” “‘It is no great wonder,’ says his father. ‘It’s the son of that wicked woman, White Jewel of Nyang—that cunning, obstinate Mila, wracked by starvation. Don’t let his shadow fall on you.’” “The father keeps moving around, fearful of being touched.” “‘If a man can fly, obstinate or not, there is no greater spectacle than that!’ says the son.” 62 �“‘Look! Look at you!’ my sister shrieks, grabbing my wrists in disgust.” “Are you a ghost? Why is your body so thin?” “‘My form is flame and spouting water,’ I reply.” “But inside I’m thinking, ‘Your affection distracts me. Worldly talk disturbs my patience.’” 63 �For death is now. (You have given me the instruction.) Watch the night-water lily endlessly crushed by snow. As I walk you are on my shoulder, as I speak you are in my throat. “Do not kill the dzomo’s tolbu calf!” (is your evervigilant advice). 64 �* Dawn bleeds night. (A white sky screams.) Tree ghosts line the hilltop. Wet wings birth. Trunks of them in a filigree of hack. Now that you’re dead, the debris of a cold one. 65 �Silver bush, you stalk these headlands. Flaunt your light at the morning’s dowdy sky. Browning growth (like savages) decays. It lacks your brilliant edge. See how the birds flock to your branches, chirping their heads off. 66 �The sun now casts an early-morning shade. Bald, my hill appraises cold. Stunning light converges on its muddy bank. I fill an altar lamp with butter, light it and place it on my head. 67 �A young lady appears in the fashion of Mon. The eastern snow lioness’ milk must be served with a golden ladle—these words emerge eerily. It is the beginning of October. Late afternoon light hugs the yarrowed mead. Lush green meadows are blanketed with flowers, bees, birds, berries, fruits, edible plants, even bamboo. 68 �* Is that a lingam behind your cushion? Greyhounds sniff then melt into breeze. “Look up there!” a herdsman points. An old dove coos its spasms of prayer. “The seminal mind is empty,” I recite. “This wind (this cold) is simply an old habit.” 69 �A falcon descends, considers extending her talons. It dips its head calmly, gulps a bit of gentle rain. It’s startled by your knotted hair, protruding bones, disappearing visage, more vast than the sky, more vast than the view of emptiness. 70 �Sweet morning. You cover the squirrels with your warmth. My hoya too spreads her arms, luxuriating in your spell. Today they touch the earth. (Yesterday they could barely bow.) Petals in three colors, being as delicate as the wings of bees, lay ankle deep at Chuwar. 71 ��d aw n m o u n ta i n ��Brown day emerges from fading-night rain. I shiver from pale dreams. The earth is clogged, the hill a maze of wet. One owl flaps its wings. 75 �Dawn’s avuncular rays roll gently through the tent. They feel momentous as I lie in my cot. “Is that a rodent?” (An animal scurries by.) I walk and drink (in) the fresh morning air. 76 �I reach into my mind. My room of wood is lush and dark. (My home faces south on an embankment that slopes steeply.) From time to time mists wreath its imposing neck like a silver scarf. 77 �Songbirds sing this morning. A single flower flops across the mud. Saltwater spray, kids, bones—a pup dashes forth, turning its head eagerly. As I listen to an owl and spy the ruby sun, I gasp with pleasure. 78 �* Blue and blue (the sober voice of day). The after-rain smells of cucumber, oddly. The stirrings of my sister . . . but she sleeps (which is good). Heather in the field plays little purple-bells. 79 �“It’s been snowing here for weeks. Very unusual at this time of year.” “The first night as I was walking, admiring the trees under inches of drift, I wandered through a cloud of cherry-blossom fragrance.” The cuckoo has come from Monyul; The sky softens the earth with its moisture. Dank sounds meld with murky cold as I nestle in the splendor of my lama. 80 �Sweet showers fall. “They’re pink!” I mutter. Yet the sky, packed with white, assuages the notion of the present. Tender plants drink gratefully. 81 �* My mother is dying (on this day of All Mother’s). I watch her aggregates fall. Eyes, ears, ability to eat, slowly dwindle away. She herself feels revolted by it. 82 �Her wily limbs are edgy and restless. “Fix your hair!” she gratuitously shouts. Drops rattle in the darkness. A dove’s solemn moan exudes (in the night) in oblivion. As the pain of my mothers ripens on me, my load is lightened. 83 �Darkness spreads through my nightmare’s tangled body. Parrots squawk. One is particularly insistent. Swirling pirouettes (an elegant letter’s grace). People are kind, escort me through places unnamable (though painfully familiar). 84 �Light folds, doubles over the day. Blossoms lift their necks. A sparrow on a fence blinks casually. A house on stilts sits quietly in the dusk. Sweet bird, where is your mother? 85 ��mingling the threefold sky ��Today as I was chanting, rosary beads clicking, my voice became a bell from whose echo a strong remembrance arose. I am in a hall with monks and horns high in smoky mountainous air. Daffodils cover the ground. 89 �Still, when it falls, the rain smells sweet. I close my eyes. Imbibe. Crows caw. Jays hawk their cries through the trees. Kids spit pits among the dandelions. 90 �Tsa. Dza. An infant mumbles letters. Could she be singing? (Calling to old friends?) She dreams of a buddha seated on a lotus, the white letter hung burning in his heart. Asters (lavender-blue) shed lustrous shadows across the ravine. 91 �Nimble (agile) her limbs hum a sutra. Thrice she offers tsampa to the Three Precious Jewels. “Look! A flower!” she says to them lovingly, urging her companions to savor it first. Sugatas crouch. They water the earth profusely. 92 �* Low horns wake me. (They roll through mud.) Ducks, rabbits, snakes wander among the grass. Pilgrims circle chortens (undulating tiers melt into sand). Then desert. Masses of sand and sand-flowers. 93 �Thus I age and die and see the luminous white field. “Send me to Sukavati, please.” (I pray hard as the wise ones suggest.) A cycle of teachings is repeated by heart. I hold to my heart. 94 �I eat before noon. Afterwards I sleep. It was written long ago. (The ancients understood.) Under vast dark sky lay vast dark sand—my mind, stretched out. Relaxed. Rest mind. Be poised. 95 �A drum, a gong, a band of gods. Lama, yidam, dakini, its roots. Bliss-gone ones, we remember you always. With gratitude we deflect your kindness. 96 �* It rained during the night. Trees smolder in diamond wet. Fish jump with life. Prayer flags toss. Somehow they remind me of the monk wracked by weakness who, thoroughly consoled, said, “If I die, I will be fulfilling the advice given by the early masters.” 97 �The pulse of the hum. The tilt of the sky. Fragile fingers yawn, paper thin and shiny. Shavings from my gouge trail to the ground. Curlicues pile up. In thinness, absorbed in my ablutions. 98 �I see snow (the pearly ridges of my land). Evil doctrines will spread. People’s minds will be possessed by demons. Had Guru Rinpoche (when he was in Tibet) been able to perform the exorcism thrice (bonding the evil forces) the buddhadharma might have remained for a long time. But he was hindered by wicked ministers and could only perform it two times. 99 �“Oh, Gyalwa Rinpoche! We have all received your blessings.” We are linked in the dharma. (The samaya must be observed.) We climb toward the sun. It rises early in this country. The majestic expanse of meadow and horses. 100 �* “What a magnificent March day!” a woman exclaims. The sound of rain flatlines with her sigh. A boy blows on a weed (perhaps it is a bubble). He doesn’t move. He stares. He thinks. The refuge of water he takes silently. 101 �The decrepitude of watching. (I’ve often wondered at my lack of faith.) “That bird could be a tsar,” I think, the muscles of its thick neck raw. In a ditch a dog lay dead. “Tara. Sweet Tara,” peals from the day-black sky. 102 �“Who is that man?” I ask a friend. (His yoga is meant for only me to see.) Facing east, I watch the water swell. An old woman hiker leans on her cane. She feels the vibrations as an offering from the foothills. Its melody tolls methodically. 103 �For it is written. (Our time will come.) Fire and flood will ease all. The gutted slope displays its roots, throbbing, twisting, dangling in air. I know that I am a mountain (that I will continue to be a mountain) for three incalculable eons. 104 �* The woodlands are quiet this forenoon. Crickets, frogs, all creatures seem subdued. “Is that a mosquito?” It is curled up, looking amazingly comfortable. Nubile women hang clothing in the sun. A deer in dripping silence stares at yellow flowers. 105 �I close my eyes (recall a winter morning). On fire with snow, each brown stone breast. I gaze at a ridge. Boughs roil. One breaks. Then disappears, leaving no tracks. 106 �Om Tare tan swa ha. Om Tare tan swa ha. Softly a syllable drops to the earth. My mind is filled with space. My ears begin to ring. Birds look up. 107 �There is no air. Only sky (rippling sky-facades). Black gates of mind, the spontaneous presence of ultimacy. I kneel. An oasis of green becomes ash. But for the mere names of the places where they happened, nothing at all is left of these marvels. 108 �* The savannah is dull. (It is late afternoon.) A low wind rises as the temperature falls. In the after-rain’s spume, birds are mute. Day turns to night. Without dusk. Not one star comes out. 109 �A candle is lit. (Cold shimmies in the air.) I lay in my cot and see cloud. A vulture on a southerly peak—the angular white outline— from where does she know it. (It bothers her that she can’t tell.) 110 �A master tells his monk: “At a particular place about two day’s walk, a dakini is dying. Make haste and as soon as you find the corpse, chop open the skull and quickly eat whatever you find.” A second disciple, a ngakpa (tantrika), from his sealed cave intuits the passing. He breaks open his door, speeds to the site, severs the head and strolls along munching. Thus he dissolves the three-fold motionlessness. 111 �The votive flame is bright rose-yellow. I rock (gaze) steadily at its pith. Animals eat. I watch them quietly foraging. Red eucalyptus drop berries onto the ground. 112 �* To seize and become fire (twice, thrice). “Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” it seethes through its follicles of earth. To the north, sand rolls high. To the south, blazing columns of light. Ah-ooo-mmmmmmm. Ah-ooo-mmmmmmmm buzzes through my skin. 113 �My unborn mind is a fetus groping. In a liquid orb it swirls by parcels of flesh. Random objects rise. I feel washed by their proximity. Are those hieroglyphs? (I can’t tell.) 114 �The burden of night (its weight on the berries). Branches droop. Children go home. Little red clusters scatter in the bog. They bob. She looks, experiencing bobbing. 115 �The steely hills are darkening. Scrubby land, flocculent and thin. The earth is a closet. (Its echo a pall.) Seeing with my tongue this place of no water. 116 �a ho a la la ho! p l e a s i n g p l ay s o n g i o f f e r ��This morning’s sky is white. Icy mist lingers over the trees. A gong and its echo still reverberate inside me. I look out on the hill. Not one bird screaks. Within a cycle of prayer, everything accumulated is dissolved. 119 �The trees—“They look tortured,” she thought. Pilgrims glide along the ground. Om ah hung. Om ah hung. Om ah hung. Om ah hung. Wooly leaves and, by the road, squirrels. 120 �A girl looks up hollowly. Through the rain the light seems full. Inside my rug, my legs fold perfectly. I watch. The skin of the earth tightens against the frost. 121 �Dawn’s cranberry sky crosses the mountain trail. How many have climbed it? Who wanders through the pass at daybreak today? Rosebuds cover the turf. Tumultuous clouds straddle gray beds. They chew flour. 122 �Look! A flower! It pops through white. The Land of Snow is protected. (It was written.) Lord Buddha said that after his parinirvana, another, greater one, would propagate the teachings. In this way he announced the coming of the LotusBorn. 123 �I was there. I know these people. The man (seeming not to hear) doesn’t alter his stride. Drops splatter on the gulch, the trees, the dirty sandstone’s graffiti. In my dream I’d been admiring a fabric that was covered with animal spirits. 124 �Caw caw caw. Caw caw caw. Molested by rain, all is wet and black. The cull of night oozes through the grass. Somewhere far off a single owl hoots. Pristine, its essential nature untouchable. 125 �Ten thousand reddened lamps burn butter (beyond the drizzle, despite the storm). I stand at the window. The burden of water presses on all beings. Two birds kiss. The land absorbs. Then it too drains (seeps to its world’s edge). 126 �Only I know if an action is a “sky action.” Only I know if its origin is unstained. She glanced at the clock. Flowers stood solemnly, pink with mud in a wetland full of cattails. 127 �I’m beginning my evening prayers. The nectar of peace seeps into my thigh. I dissolve into my song. The cry of a bird, my primordial voice. It feels like a cave. A place of no flowers. 128 �* Lovely one. I sit, listening to rain-having-ended. Its sound pervades my hill. One bird wails. The air absorbs its trace. Throaty dew hovers over the garden. 129 �I mention it, not only to bring its beauty to your attention, but its silence (and penetration) in the just-now-porous earth. Where are you, dear? When I read of teacher and disciple, repeatedly meeting as teacher and disciple . . . When Gyalse Zhenphen Thaye saw his teacher’s home from afar, he got off his horse and cried like a child. 130 �To count the geese . . . “Try. Try, honey.” “I can’t. I see that I can’t do it.” Studying the breeze, the memory comes back. Generated endlessly, they vastly assuage our desuetude. 131 �“Wind holds these words,” she whispered to herself. “Let’s rest. It’s good to rest.” Long-stemmed freesias waved a thousand arms. Lama Khyen! Lama Khyen! A voice rose, then gradually drifted away. 132 �t w e lv e k i n d s o f va j r a l au g h t e r ��It is a day of amber light with the shiver of oncoming winter. I look out. See nothing but barren hill. The sea, its patois smooth, sputters in its bareness. (The dune, I notice, is covered with lavender blossoms.) 135 �A man looks up. His eyes are cold. Fronds tilt toward sea. A ring of moon appears. (Gulls swirl, dive, take off.) Waves snap. Their seething withdrawal makes your skin crawl. 136 �The after-rain smells of cucumber, oddly. My window-shade flaps softly. Stags stalk the yard. Unwieldy horns get tangled in the trees. Tiny birds dash in and out. Their drab feathers fade in the chilly air. 137 �The land lay wet, oozing white water. A lone bird calls from a thicket of reeds. Under oaks (near a river) through the leaves, there are stars. Jonquils pop from the dull dark earth. 138 �* A common day. My hill supine and blue. A fat yellow pussy slouches up the path. “Is that a rodent?” (An animal scurries by.) One owl flaps its wings. 139 �The fog melts quickly. “It’s dry,” a woman says, rolling a carpet into place. Blood trickles in. Squiggles of raw-red prick the stark terrain. Golden ears trail (move out of sight). They prance slowly. 140 �I drift with the wavelets. (Actually I am reading.) The sudden sound of water wakes me from a dream. “What do you want, crow?” (A young throat caws.) Rain shakes the blinds that are clattering noisily. 141 �“Good morning.” (The boy wears shorts.) Birds wrestle in the tall blue grass. They grab the light, suck it in like water. A single palm waves its arms wildly. 142 �* “Honey, do you want some toast?” (Her grandmother’s gruff voice.) “Don’t play with your food, dear.” A man grunts. (He has nothing to say.) A train in the distance forges ahead slowly. 143 �“Can you help me, dear?” (She is on her hands and knees.) The pom-poms on her scuffs press her foot uncomfortably. A baby cries. Bits of water spew onto the blind. “Please, dear.” Your eyes are young.” 144 �“Nevermind, I found it!” She slumps over the rug. Its shags are limp (not clean). “Grandma, you should wash it. Don’t just put it in your eye.” “Nevermind, dear. I found it.” 145 �The sound (of old paper) sighs in the wind. Prayer flags toss in a backyard plot. A basset, alone, dragging its leash. Sniffing, scuffling along in the dark. One bird angles its call north. 146 �Ding! Ding! A single chime in the morning breeze. Daylight seeps across the hill. Fish flop. I look out and see nothing. The motion of the grass—tall, red, easy. 147 �An animal halts, pants, looks around. Could it be a deer? Its ears are like a dog’s. Wet with rain, it sparkles in the light. The sky holds this memory. 148 �Branches of sky. Pulsations of hill. The tilt of the sand, sideways and steep. Yet there are buds. Fierce light hawks little sky spots. Water pours down the little island soberly. 149 �“The sun is showing!” someone yells. Pale light breaks through the screen. The sound of birds, traffic, water—“Is that rain?” The idea of it changed me (the whole day ringing differently). 150 �* Labyrinth of sky. Twill sky of an evening. Red-berried asparagus splatter on the ground. So all around is water and a hump of earth, bland, like a white man. A violet wind blows soberly through the grasses. 151 �“Hurry Greta!” Three girls grab their bags. A trail of blue straggles behind their flip-flops. A shoeless being squats at a curb. Palms cup his face. Is he crying? I can only see his back, which is still, as if he were reading. 152 �A man rises, slouches toward the water, stares for awhile, then fiddles with his radio. Wheat-colored light razes the dusk. Black frost fills the air heady with wind and rattling sunflower stalks. On the shroud of death, inhaling lovely flowers. 153 �Dark red husks empty their world. Whose girdle is tight (pelvic bones protrude). Examining, probing. Even doves lose their voices. A tern flies by. 154 �* The chapel is quiet toward dusk. Uniformed girls play kick-ball in the field. I kneel in the pew relieved to be alone. Loons laugh. Their weird high call. 155 �An old man on a bench awakens slowly. It is early. The sun cool. The man rises. He has nothing to do. Sun cracks through a frond. 156 �His stencil on the earth, triangular and nude. A priest blesses it as it bleeds away, back into the lake. Within the wind, torrents of rain gather. It’s intense (full-on, right away). 157 �It clings and fills, clings, grows fat, clings and fattens beyond the point of bursting. Feathery rain on the edge of a field. Its spray fills one’s face but won’t make one wet. It falls with the weight of water but on landing it dissolves. Sweet rain among the fine-grained greenery. It dribbles down the draw into a shady cow pasture. 158 �A girl from a bridge (her gaze is intent). Gritty sunglasses sag. One dove coos. Coo coo coo. Her imago in the deafening moon. 159 �* Nazareth was a town. It had birds. Flutelike calls lashed the ridge mercilessly. Sticks of myrrh danced. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (their melody stays in my head). 160 �Clinging to my hoya, the moon’s mysterious shadow. Tossing in the morning light, from where did it arise? The ocean cracks against the sand (animals at bay). Your voice keeps moaning in my head as I watch the creepers fall. 161 �The sky is black, indistinguishable from sea. Sea and sky and rain and now, even the sand is coal-colored. A few drops splatter. I pity the poor animal wandering the barren hill. 162 �* I’m aware just now of quiet. Yesterday’s storm has soaked into the trees. Not even the moon moves. Rounding a bend, a tire spins helplessly. 163 �The land lay wet, oozing gray water. Trees droop. Branches crack (hang limply as appendages). A squirrel scurries along the path, starting and stopping nervously. It never once puts anything in its mouth. 164 �A frozen world. Where is the snow? Fog’s somnorific glow subdues the stoney woods. Cats prowl, squirrels linger, birds dart—on an ordinary morning. Today, silence. Everything is broken. 165 �The sun, with a smell of coolness, sinks. A slow drizzle falls. A man dies. But it is not a breach (really). Jasmine and rose follow him everywhere. 166 ���169 �170 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dohā Subject The topic of the resource Buddhism -- United States -- Poetry -- 21st century Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2005 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 972611568 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_005 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Trilogy of Being at Ease At the Snow Mountain of Tö Pigeon of the Mysterious Tree Dawn Mountain Mingling the Threefold Sky a ho a la la ho! Pleasing Playsong I Offer Twelve Kinds of Vajra Laughter Extent The size or duration of the resource. 180 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng Buddhism poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/b1dd208072db781a590059d0c5114207.pdf 00241dcad699c35b20ddac6ec2dc1a40 PDF Text Text The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 1 7/1/08 8:43:11 PM �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 2 7/1/08 8:43:11 PM �The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call Gail Sher Q night crane press 2007 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 3 7/1/08 8:43:11 PM �Copyright 2007, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. isbn: 0-9726115-8-4 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 4 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �For Brendan Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 5 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 6 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �the copper pheasant ceases its call Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 1 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 2 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �“As we approach spring.” That was all he had said, but inside her, something softened. The memory in her body, was it of air, a certain featheriness, like the way dust doesn’t quite fall but frolics. Or of being awake early, say three or four hours before light. An intense thing happens and then one proceeds into one’s normal day with that intense thing hidden. Others may sense that this person is somehow different, but they wouldn’t be able to say why or even what exactly is different. It dawns on both the person and other people encountering her, gradually. 3 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 3 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �She gazed at the grass, its green breath cheerful. From its roots she heard the sea, frothy waves settling on sand, matted and pressed by the pounding of Christ centuries. Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat. Her grandmother’s fst on the brown and yellow oilcloth. Flecks of crust like eggy pellets of bark. Were His feet muddy? They tasted of honey. Knees to earth – the red brown earth – to genufect, to seize His gaze driving like a knife through the hole in her belly. She plucked a blade of grass, sucking sweet life from its tender slenderness. Sweet water dribbled down the side of her chin before it stopped, frozen. 4 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 4 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �Before her child wakes, a mother mentally makes the shift. Her shadow is attuned to the subtle movement of his body. When his shadow sleeps, hers pauses. The stirring of his shadow, like a soft admonishing hand, presses against her stillpoints. Space opens in her skull between two waves where she prepares to cradle her son’s awakeness. 5 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 5 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �Cheep. Cheep. She woke to the smell of spring. A surge of joy – just before the longing for her mother (green and foreign) had vanished in the gush. And so my mother ceased to be my mother. She was something else. Her mother had been fond of telling stories about her past. There’d been one of a child who’d fed a squirrel. Only to be bitten. But the squirrel refused to release the child’s hand. By the time the little girl (might it have been her mother?) dragged herself home (squirrel hanging from her bloody and dismembered fngers) her psyche had been ravaged. “I know someone who sews twelve hours a day,” she’d added randomly. “She sews on paper. She’d sew on wood if she could. She’d sew and have a baby!” 6 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 6 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �She looked more closely at the hill, its jaundiced mud, sickly, too shiny, moments from sliding away from itself. “One more drop could be disaster,” she thought, peering again at the sky. “There it is. There’s the rain.” Her upstairs neighbor banged his window shut. A few drops splashed against the glass. The weatherman said rain and here it was. One bird chirped. A moan almost. 7 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 7 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �One drop and then another grazed her arm. She was leaning over the edge of her porch, admiring a row of lilies. None of them were blooming, but the lively green of their straight-backed leaves was splendid against the russet mulch. To gaze at the hill or shut her eyes and just quietly enjoy the afternoon sun, which suddenly spread, lifted its face and blazed brightly. Shrill wind sounding like a cat. Sheer curtains futtered, then poofed crazily. A moil of birds, peeping, screeching. Sun spilled through the vines. 8 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 8 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �Soft breeze. Mudfats (bowls of mudfats). A sandstone bird bath, overgrown and mossy, yawned a shallow yawn in the yard’s pudgy middle. Screeching chicks, gaping at the crop. Head back. Eyes shut. A few sprigs of white cushioning the gnarls in their quick branches. How many ducks in a row, beneath, in the lake’s sedge? 9 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 9 7/1/08 8:43:12 PM �Mist alive, so fresh on the green lawn. First light as it spread across the patio. Mountains humped the sky, a little like cows all brown and white and loafng. Deer nibbled strawberries toward the echo of daylaborers. 10 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 10 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �Light was just beginning to glaze her room as she woke from an especially deep sleep. She lay still with her eyes open. A full moon dripped through gray-green dawn. Then the odd leftovers of her dream sprawled under sea, though the sea was housed. Mansions, rolling hills, fowered valleys, slopes. Water-full rooms themselves held aquariums – massive coral fsh with lacey serene bodies. 11 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 11 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �And now that the fowers were falling, the black earth in the grove’s shadow looked white. So that when she passed through the garden, hours before dawn, the vista was ghostlike. Four small, softly curved petals fared out on the sod. On the fourth foor was a sunny room with plants and women sleeping. On sofas, on rugs, in armchairs, in hammocks. The center provided this space explicitly for rest. Women are tired, they’d said. 12 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 12 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �A cool breeze sloughed its way through the late August afternoon. It limped along. Not quite ready. A young breeze. Her young nasturtiums likewise were toppling. Once they had sprouted, they shot up strong, a little belligerent, jockeying their way toward the sun. First one fell. Now the other six were cowing. Skinny stems, snappy petals, straggling over the clay pot’s edge. 13 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 13 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �A deer and then its children – one, two graceful bones out on the glade. The smallest sucked a leaf. (The wandering mother in a moment of reprieve as her offspring fed.) Chewing, nodding, trying a drier bunch, a harderto-reach, greener bunch. A memory arose of her mother’s childlike body, sweet, like a roasted potato. 14 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 14 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �Creamy sand and ocean-blue water pressed against the sky. So that it too seemed vigorous, its blue weighty. Pulsing and sharp. Hot noon air, singed and crackled, alive over the seaedge. Dusty afternoon turned to limpid night. The mote of the frefy’s silky, neon, beep-beam-beep. The limb of a palm elbowing restful gray. “Hey you!” (A young thing with young gestures.) Peeling, cackling nuts, bark. Fronds on top fan the liquid earth. Lamp posts strut noble and tall like a black tap dancer. 15 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 15 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �Soft soft shuffe beneath caged birds. The patio’s soft lights refecting the pool’s blue shadows. An announcer in his ocean voice, megaphoned astride the savannah. One of the heads was opening. Sure enough it was blue. Or sort of blue-violet. A cigarette lighter, for example, swaggered in glowing curvatures as its black engraved initials danced hoola-like through the smoke-flled tropical air. 16 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 16 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �Rich night air, liquid air, but like champagne, bubbly and elegant, not chintzy like soda. It would become morning air soon. The memory of that other air, close-to-morning, but not as close. That other air had stars. So numerous their ring echoed through the mountain valley. Indeed you could smell them. They lay at your feet throbbing. 17 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 17 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �A single bird. Cheep cheep cheep. Pale-gray-rose fltered through the sky. Bang! A window slammed shut. Her pleasant dream resurged in pleasantness. Woodwinds, violas, bassoons . . . slipping back . . . toward the color of hay. Her urge toward this color, its precise, crisp (nay brittle) mix of yellow, brown, green. 18 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 18 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �Dawn’s pale light eased over the carpet. Bitter air blew across the hill, puffed the faded jacket of an old Chinese woman. She looked sad. And terribly foreign. Black cap, bangs, but too old for bangs. Too heavy. Her lumbered stride. A dove’s moan lingered, beyond the eaves, above the shrieks of coarser appetites. The buzzing she’d been feeling in the center of her forehead, for days unassailable, now gone. Her dark eyes scanned the horizon, the sea and the bare trunks of trees. Stout birds swinging low, then soaring upwards in the navy light. 19 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 19 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �Rust, dove-gray or violet-dawn-gray matted then needle-scratched. She imagined the canvas. Its depth and texture of color. 20 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 20 7/1/08 8:43:13 PM �A chasm, a face, nostrils, mouth, a fuffy mane of gray-white hair. A festoon of green wild things but not water. Nothing pure and fresh in this mildewed cement. The color of feathers (a pheasant’s or robin’s)— vibrations of spray piled on to ease. Breath was protection sweeping out the gross nature (a person’s inspiration, another form of breathing). Play was breathing. Wild white fragrant Pinks fowering richly over the meadow. 21 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 21 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �That morning she’d laid on the barn’s lean-to, red maple fngers (like a priest’s), chattering water, prayer. She plucked the feet from the pungent broth (slurped and swallowed its Christlike slenderness). Their crunch and thin flmy marrow. “Are they larks?” Watching them careen the stormy sky, alabaster, hollow. Pink moon covered her otherwise blackened foor. 22 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 22 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �The tawny hill. Such was its fank, the creek mostly dried grass. Rapacious thornless blackberry vines threatened the willows along the creek. Not even birds. They bathe in the rain, in the skinny moon, in skylights, eaves, rooftops or the tippy-tops of trees. 23 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 23 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �Birds madly roosting. Their clamor. In its abrupt absence, her mother’s lazy voice saying, “I don’t know” in answer to a question about her husband’s illness. Her mother, usually an alert, extremely clever woman, over matters that concerned the health of the person about whom she says “When he goes, I go” suddenly went dumb. “I don’t know,” she drawled at any query more complicated than the time and place of his surgery. She was not even sure what organ was being operated on. The peculiar quality of her “I don’t know,” a sleepy yawn – the tone conveying, “It’s too early to tell” superimposed on “Don’t rush me. Come back later.” 24 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 24 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �A lean woman in shabby clothing, though her eyes (steady) carried – not joy exactly, but hope. Wisps of white bloused her frail, gray, waist-length braids. One, bound with a rubber band, fopped over the other, tied in green elastic. A cruel wind blew. (The air was flled with the scent of plants.) Gray fungus, like drooping beards, and creepers recondite in the native forest. A distant shower, its blue slanting streak, far across the horizon. Mist covered the sky set with hard stars. The day was darkening in green shades. 25 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 25 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �The characters in her book (old lovers who had not seen each other for years) were spending a night at an inn. The room they had been assigned had a grove in its garden that shaded an entire wall. Neither of them knew the names of the trees, but gazing at the expansive trunks jutting up against their verandah helped them relax. She imagined the two of them sprawled out in their kimonos, enjoying . . . she pictured redwoods. Gnarly limbs with soft reddish bark. 26 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 26 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �Sweet soft night descended with the roses. Moist air, rose-blossomed and thorny. Soft thorns. Yes. She pulled the peach-colored fower closer, thumbing the thorns, letting them jab her calluses. The vine concealed crossed stems of buds that released their fragrances one at a time. A sheen of rain fell. One bird sang, lowing gently, regretting the oncoming night. Of course it was her own regret she’d heard into the bird. She watched a boy from across the lake walk from his swing to his back porch listlessly. She continued to watch the swing which (was it an evening breeze) kept lazily rocking. Slowly slowly, ever so mildly back and forth, the little wooden seat. Its ropes were knotted, suspended from a tree. The swing jostled (twisted in a sudden gust). 27 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 27 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �Night was coming fast. A red leaf landed in its center, arousing her. Through the darkness she could see the leaf ’s auburn, yellow, gold. Its stem stabbed the air, poking upwards, bullying the neighing breeze. She couldn’t stop looking, peering through the chill black night. No stars. Not even clouds to absorb a shred of the day’s aftermath. Pitch dark in a weary wind, even the dew, settled, tired, collapsed. 28 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 28 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �The rain had stopped. She plumped her pillows and lay back. Not a shred of light in the sky. A wave of anxiety pulsed through her body, then lodged in her abdomen and inner arms. It felt like a short, its after-buzz a limp shivering splattering through her being. A coyote’s throat curved and taut beside the cactus. Once she’d found a pelt. It was warm as if a hunter had recently skinned it. The fur had been cream-colored with beautiful brown spots. Strange. She had pictured coyotes as gray, light wolf-gray. 29 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 29 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �Whiskers was the word that came to mind. (His gray and white scratchy-looking hair.) So that her impression was of rather a gruff person. Yet examining his collection of carved rosewood animals – turtle, snake, rhinoceros, porpoise, rabbit, albatross – buttery and gleaming – something clean flled her chest. Even his wife, Scandinavian probably, seemed wholesome (retained some scent of wholesomeness). 30 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 30 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �“A sun cup,” said the writer, “is in the eveningprimrose family. Sprawled fat on the ground in a rosette of leaves, it is among the earliest spring fowers.” She had been reading the bulletin while standing in a post offce line. A monarch, a swallowtail, a bumblebee and big black beetle hovered around a feather. “Only on the coast from southwest Oregon to San Luis Obispo, and only where soil, sun and moisture mix in perfect sun-cup combination has this fower been able to survive,” the botanist continued. “While its yellow petals glow, its seeds lie buried in a sturdy capsule.” 31 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 31 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �The air was cold and the sun, crystal clear on the sparkling grass. She stepped out on the porch. The cold was steady, reliable. A strong thing. A rushing sound (not rain) wandered through the trees. It ran along the ground, in the shrubs and tilted reeds. It rustled and rattled just above the earth. The hill itself looked drier, harder. Overhead, a bleak wind lashed. 32 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 32 7/1/08 8:43:14 PM �A pair of doves waddled about. Shriveled berries from her neighbor’s hollies rolled around the drive. One sharp nerve (its potency and excess) panting its way over two front lawns. A train whizzed by. A stroke of sun, foundering, anchorless, seemed out of place in the placid winter. 33 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 33 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �Plain patched with snow (fower-flled meadows, thickets and tree-lined riparian corridors). A virile pinaceous scent, sodden after last night’s storm A fock of birds in the late February sky. She had been gazing out at the bushes. Porcelain pupils in pre-dusk shadows. A Monarch, huge and alone, fapped around a tree. Bunched snow in winter would sit (softly) composed. Did not buckle but melted under fair skies. Restless wings, vomiting themselves out of existence. Like satin to a jittery child (holding a piece in its little sleeping fst), so the end-of-winter sky with its soft, sweet middle. Even for the birds. They bumped heads. 34 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 34 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �Then sun. Color and smell faded from the hill. The meadow lay wasted. The weather, a negation of weather. Nestled in her robe, scrunching her feet in a woolen throw. Small birds enter a nightly torpor. Some shiver. Some shiver continuously. Some (goldfnches, redpolls) grow more feathers (fuff them out). “Here,” it said. Here she felt none of that. 35 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 35 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �Spasms of chimes in a powdery wind. The smack of sheet on an upstairs banister whipped then twirled into an argument with itself. Daylight vanished in a swirl of brumous clouds. Through her stained-glass window she watched them cruise, screening the stars, like brooding ghosts. Marsh grass dozed. Sky scudded past. Exhaustion from the day drained with the light and she fell asleep. So soundly. So soundly she dropped into the pit of silence. (A carrion call raged, unspooling her mind.) Gulls. Their raucous laugh unheard though high through the crazy chill. She slept and dreamed of seabirds, rising, falling, mingling in the broken shards of crashing sky-hewn water. A tooled container, half-sunken near a sandbar, bobbed its oily spillage. A sour smell, a soft mysterious rattling, awakened her. 36 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 36 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �Snow fell softly on the dark curly road. She stood in the doorway, pressed between the room’s warm glow and the street’s empty whiteness. Flanked by sleep, by the still-silent night, she slipped between the stars and sheer hard glass like the frst person on earth. Slip-skating a delicate swoop down the road’s center. Silence warmed. Powdery snow splayed across the world (air-brushing the world) as if to obliterate the previous canvas. She grabbed the sky and shook it. Smudges of cinders. One with a little boot. 37 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 37 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �A lamp draws to it night. A collection of lamps, night and the smells of night-pushing-towardmorning, light and morning-sounds already pulsing. Making things. Snails and roots. The dug earth exuding, breathing a calliope of themselves. Gushy mud. Slobbery and clay-flled. Had oozed inside, soiling her. Being sleeping in it. Upright, though not at frst. Upright walking and at frst seeming-to-be. 38 Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 38 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 39 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call was set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and frst issued in digital form by Adobe Systems, Mountain View, California, in 1989. Typesetting & production: Claudia Smelser. Printing & binding: Lightning Source, Inc. Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 40 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 41 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM �Copper_Pheasant_text.indd 42 7/1/08 8:43:15 PM � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The copper pheasant ceases its call Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2007 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 972611584 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_004 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 48 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/35d8d01c3dc77ddd5886796d812f3387.pdf fa4265787d0579a1f721429e39e31076 PDF Text Text Calliope Calliope_text.indd 1 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 Poetry old dri’s lament • 2007 The Coper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2002 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1997 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 Calliope_text.indd 2 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �Calliope Gail Sher Q night crane press 2007 Calliope_text.indd 3 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �Copyright 2007, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication my be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. isbn: 978–0–9794721–1–4 Calliope_text.indd 4 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �For Brendan Calliope_text.indd 5 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �Calliope_text.indd 6 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �contents High-on the Name Tag 1 Calliope 49 from times before our very sun 71 Sky Daughter 83 Calliope_text.indd 7 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �Calliope_text.indd 8 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �high-on the name tag Calliope_text.indd 1 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �Calliope_text.indd 2 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �there are three throats three seeds that say these are the syllables of the cross * a collared one shouted but his collar was black he’s going to die they said * and I too die in the word and I begin swallowing that consciousness * falling to their meaning at the crossing one is left one word missed in the styrofoam � Calliope_text.indd 3 8/28/08 5:11:12 PM �and in its eye a word spilling from the cup a mountain of three skulls the lady danced her curly knife assailing the tongue of the heavy man * the acreage of him bloody and in turmoil from the eyebrows up she said * how from my waist I chop how the word was severed like a blip three baskets full slipping through my toes yojanas below the enchantment � Calliope_text.indd 4 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �she had it in her mind certain colors as they would protrude into her the longing to taste think it to stone * to actually ask go to the door politely * the throat of the poem set serenly adrift telling it in the end as if light existed * my time in this throat plunged in a room of stuff � Calliope_text.indd 5 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �high-on the name tag as he with the school snapping off heads I wade walking over turtles’ necks * who sleep upwards pink from sun pink from the pain of this exposure * yes we derive the burden of fatness from a mold we are stood in a dark wooden box a fruit grabs sun from the shadow of its sisters � Calliope_text.indd 6 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �her tattoo rose as if out of the word itself dropping in plea in relic of lighted waist * her name aloud before the sirens * in a fountain in a circle the she of my face of this entanglement solidly * in the crease of her eye the butter from before that spot in salt where they embalmed my body � Calliope_text.indd 7 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �doves slept there before the snow bringing sound to her her relevance among the trees * repellent of her repellent of all words * her white chin lay there brown as a tongue (twisting in tongue) on prickly sand little tufts of height * she didn’t swallow it immediately placing the bet in her throat � Calliope_text.indd 8 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �from the caution of her throat she perched on a branch then gathered the lawn in her body � Calliope_text.indd 9 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �snow feathers was how the papers described it bowl of bone anchored in desert sand swaddled in cloth (though at sunset, it said, the mirage shifted) * words in the pit in the high pink air in the lace in her Asian play bell * the crust of his word from his downy young chin stealing it from saying itself 10 Calliope_text.indd 10 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �a vowel and I tame its way backwards to their people 11 Calliope_text.indd 11 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �slicing flesh he speaks of eyes thus she disrobed digging holes claiming them with flying stones * climbing from the pond (whose eyeballs leave hollows) columns of cars swallow the morning hill * three stages of dusk streak the child of cement a mother wheels a carriage across a sidewalk crack when I undress it is still there 12 Calliope_text.indd 12 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �I am a cobbler a skeleton in chinks dangles down my back * I am you seated nailed in you resting before you * old head I swallow you whole lick my plate with hairy tongue I feed you agony I feed you my only child * I am so full eating it from behind myself 13 Calliope_text.indd 13 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �China bloodless boy people of mast here are some if we are dumb if we are dumb so puffed and slobbering to themselves * shouting it down the mountain lugging the beast back to his people * over hills, over fields the moon’s condition come to pass come home stars lay down your heads nailed to the earth across the pasture 14 Calliope_text.indd 14 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �on the hull we die in a cauldron of talk lungs grown out give me what you hold * quit it, quit doing it look bitch! (they were in a yard) * how we locked in how we from the beginning face this land of water this conch spiraling right in the yard for a second I see sky 15 Calliope_text.indd 15 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �i my face is sound I dress in puddles of snow the road leads to water says the man and I scoop it up * o woman of meat from today on (from today on) inside your wound from your heart’s deep water * inside her was a quiet place of water the subject of water its private spot in birds 16 Calliope_text.indd 16 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �occasionally in trees one might yelp 17 Calliope_text.indd 17 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �ii she asks and I take this to heart this line and me how far towards head can I breathe in * mutt you are here wearing salt coats in darkening host of trees lay down your pack on invisible land assail the bird iii in the relapse was the bird the tail of the bird lugging its mist 18 Calliope_text.indd 18 8/28/08 5:11:13 PM �watchword come back I want to hold you * the vase tilts the eye of the peacock winks * o loud one she said swallowing they turn upright propped by the door the sky disappeared and I alone pulled downward by my head 19 Calliope_text.indd 19 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �the stars were out so I began again at the temple encampment a bell rings this is soft this is gentle to the touch * cloudscape spilling inside rabbits chewing themselves in my bed keep me whole murmurs the tin child * so as they sat in death here on my pride and again before the tree 20 Calliope_text.indd 20 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �the swimmer and I it took place at my foot under the toe-pad’s soft I woke early to plant new trees universe of flowers before and after rivers * the name of them each with its signature eluding * vowing as if this place in him were empty tendrils of fish drift dangerously close to shore not a colony but a behest to the white man 21 Calliope_text.indd 21 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �once I shed skin like fruit I peeled back I spit seeds who sprout the yellow tree-flowers * I shed eyes contrive my seeing in stones don’t cry stones I will throw the red fish back * I shed breath parting air I lay glowing light in earth rumbles beneath me breathless 22 Calliope_text.indd 22 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �wash your name in bone o my god break the day to pieces your head in pain thankfully on a rosebush * bush to bush the face of the child the skin on him this winter’s seventh month * he whispered up my burning he said that this is a moment of lace to pick a favorite from my skin 23 Calliope_text.indd 23 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �a sanctuary of shards spread like seed all over the land Calliope_text.indd 24 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �my bones are in that mountain in the vale of flowers beyond its southern pass slipped down to me by the sky how long ago * who wander broken a coterie of lambs thought of as a bush * the land was yellow and contained a tree a man tied to a pole looked up he is praying and others too are glancing eastward * 25 Calliope_text.indd 25 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �o house of cans I squat wind blows * to replace its word is why I gather mushrooms in sticky sun I squat peaceful juice spills on my gapping pant-leg finally (finally) the mountain becomes a cloud sloughing south following the man 26 Calliope_text.indd 26 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �having eaten fish I open myself to make them more comfortable I pet the fawn twisting my calves * two fish leap kiss and die * fish, fry here (o my fish) sway grass in coin of rain so far we kill the awl of fishes presides while I walk by covering my head 27 Calliope_text.indd 27 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �you enter the room of his eyes they laugh a person you can’t quite grasp o Timothy, my son, wan one * a head had its eyes lowered * still the view like the shadow of a bird sealing it so that it would belong to her how low can I arrive how much particle can I detect across the border 28 Calliope_text.indd 28 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �1 so she and now the voice from the kitchen wall whose are the shadows falling softly as they dissolve she, mother of the turned corners 2 waist bestowed again susurrus of sound (a rodent sniffs daytime) losing its balance, extending its neck in its rock loose of their call 29 Calliope_text.indd 29 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �3 tablets stand among the lambs sun spills as a tree is from the inside my skin is that tree and I, in my eyes, cannot stop the voices 30 Calliope_text.indd 30 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �north of here is dawn a little pink girl trips and falls laughing she raises her elbow to the brim of her hat the certainty of that moment when her elbow hit her hat * though her laugh was real the image was like her dress * so break so turned upon the pestle we write columns from the moon’s sleeping rabbit in holy pride we lay our bath 31 Calliope_text.indd 31 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �o town of birds circling spires chewing calamitous meat 32 Calliope_text.indd 32 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �a flare I am ark to ark a sparkler belly be full belly be full * whistling a tune my teeth sing tune, be careful * the coming of blue being born then I hear your sound in my far away hill stout verb swinging in air I arrive with wind trailing from my fingers 33 Calliope_text.indd 33 8/28/08 5:11:14 PM �i this land, once a field held a lake that could be read letters for the oracle in the shape of a green man fury red fury green take it all so the oracle left * in my throat in my long green throat he put a straight-backed chair * no one saw the book that lay open on the water ground of cans piled by the wall tell the water tell the lake 34 Calliope_text.indd 34 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �my face before the me of this gold time ii later, emptied of people emptied of all wanderingsof-mind so that the patterns shifted running more to clean rows * a tree fell a branch lay by your side * the carrion of fish pinned the hour to your footprints nosing air a colt limped home be little o one with the coat till you are safe 35 Calliope_text.indd 35 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �headstrong boy but she sees him crawling by lineage stomping his thick foot to bind dawn to your foot your sleeve and that night * from the endless parallel of my swollenness from the cause of me from such acts as the man left on my chair * licking the dog whose maggots are new maggots to see them (from my cry to take me from them) 36 Calliope_text.indd 36 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �touching them with my lips offer myself to the little heads 37 Calliope_text.indd 37 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �why did she care she wondered laying aside the book a dim light could be seen possibly from a cabin reaching in not for the word but for the space which had a time * fat drops driven violently sideways * the man’s mind into which she tossed herself becomes a bird fly away bird fly south where you are needed * 38 Calliope_text.indd 38 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �letters moved (she could barely make them out) the sky moved hanging bluntly a circle swayed toppled to the sea to you, sea, I chant and to the one with ears hearing you into me 39 Calliope_text.indd 39 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �good kalpa when old was ten the deer forgot to graze one became quite lonely a mare lost its footing on the way to feed its colt the toes of a bird ascended like a spire before which she knelt a Friday afternoon on the counter was an egg * the postman slipped the egg upon the roof waiting to burn waiting till he is blindfolded * the bird in its kindness dropped a feather in a rock 40 Calliope_text.indd 40 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �yielding thy worms arising in my mouth I want cow I want butter * the belly in calamity hawks a mere existence we among chimps sanding circles back the land dissolves (the plain becomes a shoulder) I am black my horse is black its colt is black 41 Calliope_text.indd 41 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �he blew her a kiss that night of long sound each year the fat of him in his guest gulping them down just as the sky wants * a heifer in need cuddles its milk in rolling grass guests spill * o monk of size orange and walking I wave do you see or do you simply (chewing meat) on the rug find a broken moment 42 Calliope_text.indd 42 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �in my clothes as though that had appearance sharply I thought of her straggling through snow half of her of bed body of spleen I am the red father * o little girl your Mary Janes are mine your skirt soft and brown I have carried with me everywhere do you remember the exchange that startling light-full dusk perhaps you thought I was dead * here on the wall I dance 43 Calliope_text.indd 43 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �there is a crystal-clean bathroom our plight through the orchard its crocodile flares I am that rolling my eyes 44 Calliope_text.indd 44 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �a raw man blue against the day in closed shirt may he rest older than man older than what is alive * bird woman in a squat she smokes and he, from his hands at the table’s white head * swinging the pipe (it rests on a pillow) dirt prods its bed stoneless in the sky will I cry to feel the pale trees 45 Calliope_text.indd 45 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �i jagged midnight burns covers the veins of this blousy man (I place the lamp on the damask carpet) * the chair at rest of wood beheld on (soft) drop of blood * her foot ’neath a lamp raises (lowers) slowly a baby finds some lace and is sucking on it who is now a deer chewing razor-sharp leaves its cry from the hill in the pale light 46 Calliope_text.indd 46 8/28/08 5:11:15 PM �ii so he edgy I will make you a tourniquet, brother * soldered to dawn her bare voice drops * each thorn tells the breadth holds a column of its bereavement a mountain moves to the right a residue devolves and I too rise with the sun 47 Calliope_text.indd 47 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �Calliope_text.indd 48 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �calliope Calliope_text.indd 49 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �Calliope_text.indd 50 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �calliope grass in chasuble descends towards the sea chafed, the animals in a circle o one of tooth to whose halls perched below that orbit * may I not as the plant scream * o bewildered hotness * is what I’ve heard from the embers is what homunculus no telling how the pieces 51 Calliope_text.indd 51 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �be exact said the floating maroon lady she laughs (entwined with her laugh) sea water sounds tossing fish high hush my love for once in space to wring our necks * so that we fly toward ourselves hand it to others freely being animals the noose dissolves the eel lies within the string hobbled & queer 52 Calliope_text.indd 52 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �astride the toads to the tuft to the tide pool you stand fresh in a girl of nothing * a good deal of sky pours through the roof * rest sky I who rest am the mind of the stone * its precision among me as if she were sleeping in breath 53 Calliope_text.indd 53 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �for the loss of that second when I humbled in my blankets her shoes smoldering as dead as me * click! each chaff to its earth-mate I, fallow, fall below on a tiger rug I sit in you content in you * papa, accept me! allow me to please the earlier saplings a moment appears like a tree I wake in a forest of cedar legs 54 Calliope_text.indd 54 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �I am now a wigwam who started yesterday when I swam I make magic said the man he is old of frail bone and teeth * in my toes I am a poor thing tell me again how to dance * the belly pulse the vale of scattered bread the pending of me from behind the mountain sill these lines that I cross to die near a sharp sharp rose 55 Calliope_text.indd 55 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �my mush is dressed so I rise with dawn brown cow, come (raising eyes, curious) we live under sky yellow, blue dots a paper thing from which blood drips * the cloth of this body the chime of this day bleat for me who need nothing * a Dalmatian eats fruit white food (in white cloth arms) allow us to eat which is done playfully munching bones wrapped in ribbon 56 Calliope_text.indd 56 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �as a tree to make a drawing paint myself black in this soft soft body nudging day begin, day! * a weather patch (the first gray morning) coo coo says the owl sobbing in its hole dawn nuzzles the highway lays the rye straight * o swollen mouse (cream of yard) chewing mouthfuls of earth you crawl between the peas day wanders to its fields (the turnpike grows small) mustard flowers yellow the pale noon 57 Calliope_text.indd 57 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �savagely by the bush she knelt o queen, my death, my live-wire the muzzle of the rock fastens in strength to the crux of our skin * pieces of cloth flounder being of nature porous * I wash flowers I dye weeds making rain if the oracle asks winter is coming winter will be here soon 58 Calliope_text.indd 58 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �be with me daughter borrow my history beyond the crumbling fence in my nest in my hollow living of life pink in the trade of smelling quickly * spring-sweet pink (I stand in wetted silence) * being crawling in it a monk’s three robes throb in air so long your chain (o salad of living threads) 59 Calliope_text.indd 59 8/28/08 5:11:16 PM �the robin awake though the tree is quiet on the brink one eye so shortchanged and breasted blue * splendorous fowl the gawk of you (the gawk of your wake) we are wands we are of your section * shriveling before the stripper her dress her fatherless apron devolve my son in the eyes of the fowl this dusk the dust is broken 60 Calliope_text.indd 60 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �a quail moves quickens in the welling night the bird is I dug into blackness * the dust of the dog having been being having been as its torso * dharmata so pink so many birds equally spaced on the pole 61 Calliope_text.indd 61 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �ask again make the ants talk in calvery in block of dangling feet blood drips is it in your eyes? will you write with your whole body? * breathless ant uphill on the maul where once we stood impaled in a cloud * doors align an empty hall inserting inserting in augury of the palid one to dye the knuckles green sun is caught in my sparkling forehead 62 Calliope_text.indd 62 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �rejoice! singing smokestacks cobblestones walk this dark night o fairest lady of the next frost * in the canal where we used to fight in the hour they held left to their fingers alone * in earth blue in lodging of cold verb the mark of the bird wandering in air to the high tall west * 63 Calliope_text.indd 63 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �I am its lot I am its endlessness the land of cry in the bit of our grain a cardinal sits cocked in chirp my blood in the egg frosty & solid 64 Calliope_text.indd 64 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �to be sky-full once a rag of nods as the tide seeps in the camera of her (wanting numbers to fit) now and again an instant will finish 65 Calliope_text.indd 65 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �white book white endless knot out to my solitude behind this excruciating face far away the sound of prettiness even anyone fled as if countries exist over there 66 Calliope_text.indd 66 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �my city moves sideways till I cry till I am backwards water falls beneath my shadow which I lick with my sour tongue * wanting my hell warmer wanting my own mothers back mirror days down the ridge in pieces at another lunch several years apart * chiseled awake worn again to life the nibbling of me under the nail’s ridge 67 Calliope_text.indd 67 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �concealed in frost I lie abed yellow o windhorse! o mare of my old mothers! 68 Calliope_text.indd 68 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �waving at the train I grin again night has passed into endless lighted stars pushes dawn down its narrow blue ridgeway * o chested ground of hills sky folds in sad flowers birds wail the king’s three notes * the life of its custody she brings meat wrapped in dress 69 Calliope_text.indd 69 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �before the gate the essence of her children daughters in red all animals shorn 70 Calliope_text.indd 70 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �from times before our very sun Calliope_text.indd 71 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �Calliope_text.indd 72 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �from times before our very sun* storms on the sun her day on the sun-ease a yellowjacket lands on the jagged pilgrim wall a child cries seeing it on the hill seated in sun like death * the feeling of calm as they swell into me ground of rain relaxed a white swan curls its neck in the mud *From danger on peaks by Gary Snyder 73 Calliope_text.indd 73 8/28/08 5:11:17 PM �* I cometh on a camel black in silence (ear in dawn) black calf of black curled eye 74 Calliope_text.indd 74 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �the birth of hair that day in the ski one deer falls in shifting autumn light way back (way back) done to words as I lay dying * slipped beneath the nail the bristle of her on ordinary stair step a boy is whipped who becomes a metal leaf by her hair-mitten (by the white elephant god) * bandaged boy carrying fresh milk 75 Calliope_text.indd 75 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �you smell of yesterday’s hemorrhage the yell in the night in memorial of shoes boxes and boxes of the dead man 76 Calliope_text.indd 76 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �his (demon) breakneck no guy (o regent of the brass) that cunt and now war 77 Calliope_text.indd 77 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �to suck the mole (its kid horse) and I, in tow, next to the warming earth bringing the speed dragging it from the hill eeking it from my lonely fingers * o fabulous horse streaming down my back in paw her flames of parrot earth erupts to bring the queen to place * shattered girl your home is lost one penny in child crumpled history lost 78 Calliope_text.indd 78 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �the cornice where you jump driving a stake in the hard-packed dirt 79 Calliope_text.indd 79 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �she carved the line on her scalp clean of hair it reddened in pleasure languishing by the water she (of death) watches her history fall * the cradle where I land for I fall from the tree (the wild sweet orange) in awl (in plum) how we read mice hearing my own mountain sob * to hear (your mind to hearing) 80 Calliope_text.indd 80 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �o lamb of purr the deer lies fallow thrum of rain the sluice before me breaks me one tear falls from the left eye of the statue 81 Calliope_text.indd 81 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �Calliope_text.indd 82 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �sky daughter Calliope_text.indd 83 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �Calliope_text.indd 84 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �birds popped in the coming of yellow lady of ring of flowers rising tall slow-land flocks gathering its wings for the leaves twist prettily in their own quiet * soft face on soft cloth she weeps inside the yellow string left to herself left to the ones on trees * waking at dawn the notion of flowers giving head to a flower 85 Calliope_text.indd 85 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �(o god) calling it by name a word in sedge holds red within itself * a mother cries across a sea-bed rose-o-rose o-robins in their beauty to die on the male a king as you were promised draw it, dear draw me what you see 86 Calliope_text.indd 86 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �the fiction of her dreaming herself alive I dream (in her presence) carved by myself from a tree stigmata, my life a single tree starving to quietly save the calf o mother of six deaths * your old friend calls knowing you are tired who is her in chld who is my alive mother the agony of grass meat of this dinnertime the coziest name churning inside my stomach * 87 Calliope_text.indd 87 8/28/08 5:11:18 PM �o basketry your lathe of wood cometh umbels of maidenflower tremble in a breeze in her vest a polyp of her death why do I cry to see the pale seeds fall 88 Calliope_text.indd 88 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �our tribe (our lake) feathers from our land o hand, you’ve taken it from our mothers in servitude of kittens toggling one mountain away * stoke the fire so the cat can die quickly by this rose by this young sheep finally vultures atop salmali trees gouge my eyes to suck the fat listen sweet mother of the fallen river! * winged-of-now clocking death 89 Calliope_text.indd 89 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �iron leaves pierce my flesh day-in-and short my stomach in woolens 90 Calliope_text.indd 90 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �behold the sky please (I am myself pasting words to sky) a bird-dog watch at Christmas long ago o yellow boy (pup of thin arms) here a topknot repeat after me my short day 91 Calliope_text.indd 91 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �queer dogs in dawn land of snow farms melting like history o one of head of short (short) ears * cur in snow we are frozen our hearts are tough salt hawk-fawn of the high plateau doggy of the silent lips your notes of grass I lick * the morning teams (sunny, cloudless) I hunt and my dog follows birds sing me quick (sing me up) being wooden me spindle of three gleams 92 Calliope_text.indd 92 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �raise yourself, Charlie murmured the calf weasel be free breathe well from whose vase sprouts a ruby branch bathing death in the rose-frozen evening air * I lean up buried upright as a narrow fellow my leopard sleeps (on rock of wool) my long waist sobs as I touch you again * dress yourself! she said providing him with cloth the congress of him in homily 93 Calliope_text.indd 93 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �of his warmth to her I shift in my seat the old man’s paper falls upriver leaves sever the city 94 Calliope_text.indd 94 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �I’ll sell you, she says standing on her back one sore hand nailed to a cross the filly in her saber coat frees me like a pencil roaring around the hill being eaten in it frankly * to deeply knowing the pencil the sharp back of bread in scree slices in disk crack come dear be eaten tonight together 95 Calliope_text.indd 95 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �released of name (o gods) the town hall stands in simplicity like a monk-man my golden bone of day in penalty in supreme bigness I sit tall eating off the dead * and now you, mother! and now me of the head watch son, as we die (I watch her watch) the petal of moons the tide of ten swans one yielding fawn creeps away silently 96 Calliope_text.indd 96 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �contemplative (your sharp sharp rose) started from her as the plum rose is once before death the sound of spoons bringing me winter tulips * bending me up to my open cave door white-bellied swallows erupt from the barren cliff cow over cow (sighs tall in the manger) pure air forgives what my life is * 97 Calliope_text.indd 97 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �stacks of sticks (agony of sticks) hold us in your hand (bloody nails can be removed) the sky rolls on (on-the-prowl) once again o wolf sky swirling beyond the hedge 98 Calliope_text.indd 98 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �Calliope_text.indd 99 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �Calliope was set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and first issued in digital form by Adobe Systems, Mountain View, California, in 1989. Typesetting & production: Claudia Smelser. Printing & binding: Lightning Source, Inc. Calliope_text.indd 100 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �Calliope_text.indd 101 8/28/08 5:11:19 PM �Calliope_text.indd 102 8/28/08 5:11:20 PM �Calliope_text.indd 103 8/28/08 5:11:20 PM �Calliope_text.indd 104 8/28/08 5:11:20 PM � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Calliope Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2007 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780979472114 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_003 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. High-on the Name Tag Calliope from times before our very sun Sky Daughter Extent The size or duration of the resource. 112 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/00f4d53d0bf27b33304fa5c4828779df.pdf 5e19151018343cf28760f6eb7dbba2e4 PDF Text Text Bir·dsof CelticTwiliglit A NOVEL IN VERSE GailSher NIGHT • CRANE 2,004 PRESS �Copyright 2004, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press, 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 www.gailsher.com Cover art: Gail Sher No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN: o-9726n5-1-7 �Birds of Celtic twilight. A fen, a sea, strongwind and her Maggie, rough-hewed, interior, brash. Rocks, her secret Gaelic love. Windiness alone, above all else in bleeding. Pull her nightly to the tall dark cliff. A rain of birds, raptors and the snouts of sea animals. ·· 0 A chilly day. Wind cracks the fog banging on chimes. A lone owl hoots. Gregorian notes crash riotously as the wind howls, bumps against the dirty glass. She stood shivering, gazing at the scrawny hill. There a seal there a gull amidst the tide, slapping the coastline. Full-to-the-brim it tumbles leaving its echo­ roar to disturb or not the flock that just landed. A palish sunrise hacks at the cold day. I �She stalked the edge, the very precipice of the universe. (Such were her thoughts as she walked this dawn, next to the water, singing.) 0 It wasn't clear what kind of day it'd be. Dune flowers relaxed, softly swaying. She faced the sea, its moody blundering. Gradual swelling, then long, windy nothingness. Raw­ ness climbed the cliff. The gulls' slow arcs above the graying clouds like half-dried sheets, soppy, not crisp. Her thoughts fell to the boy who knew now that he loved the girl who, the day before, had married a man she didn't love, had never loved. Her mo~her saw his yearning. She couldn't stop her daughter, she felt, so she tried to stop the boy from making a fool of himself. Facing the moony shore she shook her finger at its whitecaps, which plunged regardless. So much pain, yetpfumph-there they go. Later she stood, backhanding crumbs from around her chin, swishing them from her bodice. Stars shone brilliant above the sleepy sea. She walked out into the night, the full moon reeking, fire flowers flitting through the bountiful air and sky. Crunch crunch 2 �crunch. Her footsteps on the gravely path down to the beachhead. 0 The birds were silent when she woke dizzy with her violent dream. She lay there listening. The slappy sea. Pounding, roaring, lashing out its non-message. She lay awake, sour breath melting salt-sea night. Rain and sea, a hovering mist cycling and enclosing her world. (She felt like an island.) 0 DEAD. This manner of speaking referred now to his father, the man who saw God twice. First God told him to paint. Later God told him to stop. Does anyone do more? She woke into the brilliant morning knowing the answer. 0 A high sun shone. So bright. So bright that its rays struck the coil of a road up the green-capped blindingly­ glistening hill. Cows grazed with their backs toward it. 3 �She stripped her toast of crust and buttered it lavishly. Her hoya 's blossoms twirled along the ledge, gulping the sunny sun. She sipped her coffee, dazed, staring out, comforted by her tangled dream that wrung from her her terror, twisted it out like a wringer twists out dirty soapy water. The room was quiet. The slight jump of the wall-clock's hands. The tippling wind on her outdoor flowers. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. She felt paralyzed. As if the significant click, the one to which her life had for years looked forward, had taken place in the dark, during her dream. The intensity of the brawl still present in her body. 4 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Birds of celtic twilight : a novel in verse Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2004 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 972611517 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_002 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 6 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications https://digital.lib.buffalo.edu/files/original/0bd99f0d99a4a9b8ba3ce3e7ff4cb59d.pdf 28a80693813d01545c584747117dd539 PDF Text Text The Bardo Books �also by gail sher Prose Writing the Fire: Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive • 2006 The Intuitive Writer: Listening to Your Own Voice • 2002 One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers • 1999 From a Baker’s Kitchen • 1984/2004 poetry The Bardo Books • 2011 White Bird • 2010 Mother’s Warm Breath • 2010 The Tethering of Mind to Its Five Permanent Qualities • 2009 though actually it is the same earth • 2008 The Haiku Masters: Four Poetic Diaries • 2008 Who: A Licchavi • 2007 Calliope • 2007 old dri’s lament • 2007 The Copper Pheasant Ceases Its Call • 2007 East Wind Melts the Ice • 2007 Watching Slow Flowers • 2006 DOHA • 2005 RAGA • 2004 Once There Was Grass • 2004 redwind daylong daylong • 2004 Birds of Celtic Twilight: A Novel in Verse • 2004 Look at That Dog All Dressed Out in Plum Blossoms • 2002 Moon of the Swaying Buds • 2001 Lines: The Life of a Laysan Albatross • 2000 Fifty Jigsawed Bones • 1999 Saffron Wings • 1998 One bug . . . one mouth . . . snap! • 1997 Marginalia • 1997 La • 1996 Like a Crane at Night • 1996 Kuklos • 1995 Cops • 1988 Broke Aide • 1985 Rouge to Beak Having Me • 1983 (As) on things which (headpiece) touches the Moslem • 1982 From Another Point of View the Woman Seems to be Resting • 1981 �The Bardo Books Gail Sher night crane press 2011 �Copyright 2011, Gail Sher All rights reserved. Night Crane Press 1500 Park Avenue, Suite 435 Emeryville, California 94608 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner and publisher. isbn: 978-0-9794721-8-3 �For Brendan ��contents Death 1 Bathing Suit 15 Black 25 Cow 33 Hunt 39 Birth 45 ��Death ��A man breaks fish. The man mentally smoothes its fins so that they don’t stick out. I’m waiting to be black, he’s saying, but it is food he’s uttering. I can see the food grow in his eyes. Though the black diffusion of fish swims away from the horizon, the fish continue endlessly. I see the fish who is my brother. Its time is pink like mine. We flow in the same yard. 3 �Maybe my mother is a former fish whose throat was broken by the man. I offer her a word. I lift the word to the level of my forehead. Where’s my death? she is asking. But I think it’s the clairvoyance of my mother, the instant in her dream wandering around her body parts. Once she saw sun draining down a mountain path, like the ridges of a shell, the beauty of a hump on death. 4 �Before my mother is dead, I begin, but you say, No. ‘before’ is a word. Words are time. Of is its existence. The time of the word, dead (the word), hanging from sky, is an activity that she knows from already having been dead. Time is not skin in which body parts are wrapped, but of ineffable pink flamingo fluff, later, back in the hotel room. 5 �So there is this dream of a mother somewhere in death. Actually she isn’t dead, but merely spaces I shuffle around. As if a cold steel point is inserted in her with the sense that this is correct, this is good to insert this inside you. It’s the dead person, she thinks. Like a Harlem of her lying on either side of me, but someone says, No! Go to school, as if wherever she is is center but not the center of anything. Then I go, Oh, she’s dead! seeing as before, heavy rice-tassels ripening in the fields. 6 �* Low sun from above you on lilies, blue flags. She walks a hill and the cool sun is prescient she feels. Like a garden of animals, caribou, birds, rhinoceros soaking, so that the sun emerges in them darkly. Dusk is like a hen absorbing herself into her chickens, she murmurs. The wrinkles of the sun swell on your back and I’m thinking, There’s the sun, but it’s just one of the five poisons. 7 �A man stands on a hill. Light and birds and leaves dribble from his fingers. Unnnnn, he utters. I am without rivers. I am without a sound that can be replicated. As how light passes through death, like the skin of a bird peeled from its wing. A young bird honks, honk-honk-honk, as if its feathers are a territory, too excavated, almost the whole weather. 8 �A body melts in sun. A herd melts. A melted herd is called downward directness. Because what is isolated is stopped. Air’s inside is caught. Upward directness stopped is like movement’s absolute inside. A hat might exist, in this sun, like snow in sun or a flower pressing sun. The beauty of the hat is because our world is situated at the heart level of Buddha Immense Ocean Vairochana, a person remarks. 9 �Sun slips to sea as if air were sea so that within slipping there is existence. Sea is fact. And each sea avuncular like a family structure. I look out to sea and the green ripples wave and a little boat drifts like a concept I can forget about. The splendor of water admits a line of morning light, which could be light repelling its own limit or light irrespective of her sense of limit. 10 �Somehow a bird slips away from its limits, therefore it exists, like a rainbow or a raindrop. The fusion of a shell touches a current of shells, or like the inside of a wave, if I died, it would be the same as seeing the wave in a mirror. If I look at the sun, slowly, imagining it’s a meadowlark, something is solidified in the tense mind of my hand. A mirror appears to take my hand inside, but I want my hand to be its own inside. 11 �Which is of time, like being fed time. Taste is in her neck, the city of her body. A dead boy leaves a trail in a house toward the bottom of its body. Like if a peach dies and becomes decipherable, like the inside of my food. Daylight in a voice or the skin of sea is a separate gesture cordoned off as if for that you would have to stand in line. 12 �I am now a person touched by sea, the motion of sea inside the horse, harvesting the horse. Maybe the artist drew the horse’s shell after it was a horse. The beauty of a horse is forever, you mutter. The scale of a horse inside a man or a man possessed by a dzo pulling a blazing cart of fire—the lines of thought cannot, like a ‘shippei,’ be grasped tightly in one’s fist. If a horse eats sea, it’s sea’s endless rocking land, the climax of one becoming one again, recycling what has never left. 13 ��Bathing Suit �A woman begins, is the value of space, like a child in a pool, shuffling air in which hard wood is air. She breathes through wood, taking sharp quick breaths. I want the soft cloth of children, she’s saying. Her breath has height and the texture of children swimming, new swim, out and out, yet clearly touching the bottom. The mind of wood may rest itself to completion, she murmurs. Wood and air is swimming there, in the space of air filtered through a dark forgotten memory. 16 �She is complete air. She tucks herself in air, as in the taste of breath, the babysteps of breath. She is anterior to her air and tries to tie air like a ball. Someone gives me a ball and I tie up the ball. I feel certain that I want to tie the ball. She calls it air because it’s there like air, but actually it’s a kind of stupidity. 17 �Swimming is like a captivity in its body. Every minute in a row I am swimming everywhere and wanting to spend my time swimming swimming swimming. Because death, too, is an integer. I say ‘grass’ and it follows me into longevity. The absence of time, like grass without time, or a lizard in its skin but outside time so that its purity lay in its body. The brain of the sky snaps an instant to its purity because everything perceived is Buddha Vairochana. 18 �My mind vanishes then. Inside its skin it has its male and female aspects. A pool of mind is a passage of light, raw light, the membrane between the watery part of light. A person flows through wood and is the breath of a swimmer, like two dead people in love. Air in a heart is the same air resting there. 19 �* A woman walks but she is dead. Her red dress is dead. She is pasted on a page like a paper doll. There is a handbag and hat that can be separately attached, which is how clothing exists if the person is not living. She longs for herself in the stray black bonnet, alone, by the sea, soft as a wave. She takes in sky like a flower sky. If I see you, then see you as if you were an outline, it’s like seeing an avoidance. 20 �An image of a body has the sweet porous colors of body + ideal body, like the image of a bather standing under sky where sky, a haze of pink, traces itself onto the person’s body. Piercing a bather snuggly wrapped in towel, piercing straight through her body. To be a small body on the underside of the color. A housekeeper of color, someone remarks. (A bird swims in time that has already escaped.) I see the bather’s legs, long and clipped, its posture of mind rooting repetitious shadows. 21 �The body is a uniform wearing the person. Color leaks out. A painted bather’s body is how light looks like this color. A bather’s cap and suit mark that person. Blue is the form of the feeling of her standing within boards shaped like a skeleton of sky. Boards in sky have a plethora of sky as if it’s sky that’s being constructed. The mark is interior, like the film of an angel disengaging from its body, wrapping itself around a life, saying I am my own angel. 22 �Opaque light under a bather’s knee, reflecting from its knee, because we’re through the knee, seeing a miasma of lustrous color. As if sky is knee because of the bather and sky’s proximity. A bardo of knee makes time that is a color. (The interval of a knee where red skips to a color.) So a painter paints a shape that is an appearance of time’s color, like a word appears as object and can be the object even in darkened space. 23 �Sky sheds words. The language of its space harkens toward direction, as if each object has its indigenous essential direction and the painter paints that. The interest in a knee wells up from light, like time plucked from myriad pools of time that whisper, I am that time. Roses are pure gold, their presence sartorial, upright. Scent is cast by their shadow. I sleep myself back to a set point of sky, like a ration of sky, raising the mass of doubt. 24 �Black �A black bird’s hair flows in the wind as if instinct pursues forward but forward is inside its body. Because ordinary birds cannot implant as an animating principle the non-direction of breath. A black bird lifts. Direction, not sensed, but being in the time of the bird’s body which the is-ness of its nest matches. I know your breath. The vibration now channels through the black part because black-on-black is how its breath is sheltered. 26 �Sweet water on the bird (the bounteous color of black as a form) dissolves back into its body. High black, like butterflies leaving imprints, in deference to that, which, after disappearance, is what is left. The allure is time, direction underneath itself, falling through wind, gushing through a mountain stream. She stares into a lake. A butterfly drifts on the surface of the water. Its wing is torn and she imagines its life rising briefly above its death before drifting off. 27 �A body dissolves and there is no memory of its having been undissolving. Like a bird whose hair got swallowed of its color. It is sizeless, jigsawing red, as if red is the surrogate of all possible places. A man taps a bird on the window of its head. He can dissolve without passing away, someone says. Then I am in my body but not captive in my body, because the reflection of my body as a “high” black bird got swallowed up. 28 �I describe an ideal of bird, a content of mind, like the sharpening of her hair so that she has little vajras of hair. Don’t suck your hair, her mother yells. An ideal of something ripening, a child’s bird near a nobleman’s. I want to put my bird near his so it will learn to sing with the same beautiful voice, the child explains. Her body has a sound and each limb I trace around my leg. Its breath-imprints paint the space of breath-swept thought. Like crammed flowers in a barrel hold together the heart of the person. 29 �Vajra is extent, no hair the space of being so happy. A mother abides and is in favor of her (as at a baseball game sort of). A wind-stroke of abiding, like the earth on its axis, which as we find out, doesn’t make any difference. To cultivate the awkward eye, the bird’s back eye, under its shoulder sleeping (in the bottom way of a being’s shrill sleep). The circumference of her sleep makes a limit in her body so that she cannot move beyond the elusive space of her body. 30 �The no-hair of her is exact her, so the mother thinks, I am not her. Then the mother fights. I am her also. Somewhere, like the bird, is why I keep one near me also. Slow words are on its belly. If you crawl under the bird, you see script you can decipher. A lexicon of hair (like a ballet of hair) so that repeatedly we converge on the edge of earth. 31 ��Cow �A woman paints cows in the passionate arena of some easiness in her. She relaxes into cow and paints a full and complete rectangle of color from her own memory. Like a wheelbarrow of cow (red squares may faintly vary according to the grass, which the woman doesn’t paint). The woman paints cows but she is actually painting her mind waving a khata for three seconds at death. 34 �Of course there is the painting of a blue girl as if the artist’s mother were dead. I too am in deadland. That quickening sense, as if she were a hall. The animals of a person come out. Once I was pure. Now the casing of kittens unfolds on my bed and my mother’s ignorance spills out. If she cooks I am afraid. If she hears I’m in the dynasty. 35 �Then a bird swoops down, soaring like a vulture. The tail of the bird shines its domino white/red/black. No-cow is cow, cow-time, or the fun of its calf, who is ticklish and laughs. So there’s a double cow, my dead mother’s mind, instead of her having her own. A woman plans her mind but quickly pastes something over it so it is lost. 36 �The milk-white bird lands on a cow’s head. The coils of the bird are like the value of wind suddenly. The cow sits without breath, skin colored like a tree. The moon could be a boat and the cow jumps over the boat only it is sitting and breathless and there is no water. An old cow moos from below itself upwards. In the gaps of the cow, because the light of the moon makes the cow REAL. 37 �A brown and white cow grazes on a hill. A common cow merging with the hill, as if it were a shelf holding all of the hill’s karma. The speed of the hill slows. Its eyes are just beginning, you proffer. A dead person becomes permeable. I’m that buttercup! I’m golden in the cow, a clear gold buttercup blossoming in the cow’s stomach. The tenderness of rushes and sweet voice of birds, a broom and bell till all sounds fluff them out. 38 �Hunt �A songbird steps through sky, absorbs the moor into its shadows. Its woolly bottom carries the number of nights it has been alive. The habit of sky moves in its bones. As how a verb, energetically transcends its sphere of meaning. The chore of it is the meaning. The movement of the land, wet and cold, rubs the man’s limbs. His gun is slack like an intelligence he can’t quite muster. A game bird’s flesh in air absorbs the brother air of his body. As if the bird is hunting his body and knows the use of his body. 40 �The head of a bird glows. Is it day or the bird? (The motility of its edges seeps through day like water.) Pieces of day. A pigeon moves in its body. If you leave air, there is no air, someone says. Sky bathes air like lineage brought from air. I have a pearl between my tail which can’t cross over the threshold. The wing of the bird drains of its flight as if one’s life is sped up so one can die. 41 �The beauty of a kill hangs in fog, which is what the man is seeking. He is married to kill still living there. He is in and out of color. Like he could pet the color, whose correlate is nativity. My stumps have knees but my legs cannot hold them. (Plum light weaves through my idea of the sky’s body.) A bird is brush, its gaze a throb. Its blueblack wings dip and slip. 42 �It feels like decomposition, flesh, rare-pink, a nick in the bird’s wing. The hair of the bird, digested by its mind in the mind of its karmic murderer. Whose bardo may be shot up. I eat sky, then the outcome of its body. (The belly of the bird waddles through flowers.) As if he eats his former mind thus twice-killing the bird and the potential of the bird. A moor fowl in the tentative sense of locale. 43 ��Birth �You are pock-marked like my birth. The wrongdoing of one in a long stream of Indian nobles. As if calamity rode in and no one was there. A war of one or no war being so violent. Like the Church or war-torn hearts afterwards in the alley, the animal’s eyes, dust to what is feral. The press of them, like cups, which is the smell of my birth in them. 46 �You come like a gust and intimately, where intimate is my finger. Touching you, inside a stone, in the hearth of a house there. Your mind is alluvial. If you roam I see the stubble of water pierce through you like an arrow. A bird hums inside its beauty like the inside of a sound heard only by its bird. 47 �If a bird arises from time and then the quick shape of something yellow, its gorgeousness is there. A tin of snow is your gift. The idea of immanence, a decoy of a time. The idea moves into other bodies. Cage-birds chirp in the bedroom of a sick person, making their singing esoteric. I count snow as if one, two, three live in the snow, are part of the snow’s paradisical logic. 48 ��The Bardo Books is set in Minion, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in the spirit of the humanist typefaces of fifteenth-century Venice. Minion was originally issued in digital form by Adobe Systems in 1989. In 1991, Slimbach received the Charles Peignot Award from the Association Typographique Internationale for excellence in type design. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gail Sher Collection Subject The topic of the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Poetry -- United States Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The bardo books Subject The topic of the resource Buddhism -- United States -- Poetry -- 21st century American poetry -- 21st century Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sher, Gail, 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Night Crane Press State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2016-03-04 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 2011 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry Collection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Gail Sher and used with permission. For more information contact the Poetry Collection at lpo-poetry@buffalo.edu. Is Version Of A related resource of which the described resource is a version, edition, or adaptation. Changes in version imply substantive changes in content rather than differences in format. 9780979472183 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LIB-PC011_001 Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Death 1 Bathing Suit Black Cow Hunt Birth Extent The size or duration of the resource. 60 p. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. LIB-PC011 Language A language of the resource eng poetry publications SherPublications