Walking home alone
From the sporting arena:
A curve of spring moon.
Snowing on the lake,
Snowing on the limbs of elms,
Snowing on spring snow.
The stars are dredging
The bottom of the spring river
For bits of blue steel.
The path in the woods
Is barred by spider webs
Beaded with spring rain.
Could this melody
Be sung in other countries
By other birds?
A silent spring wood:
A crow opens its sharp beak
And creates a sky.
The drone of spring rain:
A lonely old woman strokes
The fur of her cat.
Above a gray lake,
In skyscraper window panes,
A dying spring day.
In a bar’s doorway,
Wiping his mouth in spring wind,
Seeing nobody.
Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.
A train roars past
The eternal gree of fields
In a rush of steam.
Naked black children
Chasing down an alleyway
After a gray cat.
Softer than sound,
The moon-struck magnolias
On a still hot night.
A tall pretty girl
Wearing a purple raincoat
In the month of June.
Streaks of fire-flies
Freezing the magnolias
As white as ice.
The metallic taste
Of a siren cutting through
The hot summer air.
Faint in summer haze,
The contours of green hills
Through clouds of flies.
A rain-wet buzzard
Amid dripping magnolias
In the setting sun.
Through white cotton fields,
Lifting toward the sunset,
A golden river.
A radiant moon
Shining on flood refugees
Crowded on a hill.
At slow intervals
The hospital’s lights wink out
In the summer rain.
In the summer storm
A window shade is flapping
In my neighbor’s house.
In my sleep at night
I keep pounding an anvil
Heard during the day.
August noon hour:
All the objects of the world
Digesting shadows.
I have lost my way
In a strange town at night, ---
A sky of cold stars.
From a far valley
Comes the faint bark of a dog
Over yellow leaves.
Smoking brick chimneys
Belching up misshapen moon
In an autumn haze.
Midnight is striking:
In a cold drizzle of rain
Two men are parting.
The crowded harbor:
Soft lights are blazing at dawn
In a drizzling rain.
Autumn moonlight is
Deepening the emptiness
Of a country road.
Across the table cloth,
Ants are dragging a dead fly
In the evening sun.
Golden afternoon:
Tree leaves are visiting me
In their yellow clothes.
A hesitating sun
Turns a slow deep red and then
Falls into the wheat.
Three times a bird calls;
At last there comes a response,
Meek and far away.
Little boys tossing
Stones at a guilty scarecrow
In a snowy field.
A cracking tree limb
Intensifies the starlight
Upon blue-white snow.
In this rented room
One more winter stands outside
My dirty window pane.
Between today’s snow
And that which fell yesterday,
A night of bright stars.
The arriving train
All decorated with snow
From another town.
The scent of an orange
By an ice-coated window
In a rocking train.
Through shifting snow
The ghostly outline of ships
In the quiet harbor.