Thursday, December 28, 2017

Poetry for a Cold Winter Day

It's -13 F today and our house and street are surrounded by snow.
So quiet it's as if the world has stopped.
Rearranging a  lower bookshelf, a thin volume slid out, which
got opened to a random page.
These are the words that leapt out:


 


December sun seeps into the woods
orange yolk over bare limbs
drips into a grove
where woodpeckers
tap tiny solos
                           a net cast
                           in the wake of the day

Chinese monarch King Wen
tells us the wanderer can progress in little things
when the source of light is farthest from the earth
and bends the prism
like a bow
                           and he finds himself
                           surrounded by woodpeckers
                           tapping out their eternal question

how to hold
interwoven rhythms
in a net of changing light

                          ~ ~ Paul Pines

Excerpt from Book Two: The Absent One
in Divine Madness (Marsh Hawk Press, 2012).