Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Check out this great poem by Paul Hoover from the new issue of the Laurel Review.
River
Writing's an aid to memory,
memory's an aid to thinking,
and thinking is near the soul,
where the grassy riverbank
makes the water look green,
and the "scent" of one haiku
drifts toward the next one,
a meditation on rushing water
that makes distance fearless,
distance which gives us names
like Euphoria and Wisdom,
names that travel the length of a sentence
before they find the falls.
Knee-deep at its source,
we set the river dreaming
toward its final destination
where the wind from three heavens
smells like princess chicken,
the good kind, from Yang's.
As it awaits the cooking pot,
a fish stares at the ceiling
with its eye of milk and tinsel.
Soon it will sing a song
as rich as Chinese silk.
Once it was part of the river,
river that comes from the distance
and returns there also.
While the rest of us carry on
the great labor of thinking,
children do all the cooking,
their voices in the fire.
It's all connected somehow,
like a net that's full of holes.
How thick the water's green--
double green, the glassy river
and its mind-tossed banks.
(After Chinese Yueh-Fu ballads)
Maxine Chernoff's and Josh Kryah's are especially good too. I have one in there too, one I feel very humble about just now.
River
Writing's an aid to memory,
memory's an aid to thinking,
and thinking is near the soul,
where the grassy riverbank
makes the water look green,
and the "scent" of one haiku
drifts toward the next one,
a meditation on rushing water
that makes distance fearless,
distance which gives us names
like Euphoria and Wisdom,
names that travel the length of a sentence
before they find the falls.
Knee-deep at its source,
we set the river dreaming
toward its final destination
where the wind from three heavens
smells like princess chicken,
the good kind, from Yang's.
As it awaits the cooking pot,
a fish stares at the ceiling
with its eye of milk and tinsel.
Soon it will sing a song
as rich as Chinese silk.
Once it was part of the river,
river that comes from the distance
and returns there also.
While the rest of us carry on
the great labor of thinking,
children do all the cooking,
their voices in the fire.
It's all connected somehow,
like a net that's full of holes.
How thick the water's green--
double green, the glassy river
and its mind-tossed banks.
(After Chinese Yueh-Fu ballads)
Maxine Chernoff's and Josh Kryah's are especially good too. I have one in there too, one I feel very humble about just now.
