Bits of poetry

Spring Abstract What if shadow were to give birth to shadow and the rock burst forth shoots tendrils and the sky become water and the oceans dry birds become fish that fly and fire freeze solidify and trees descend into sand salt taste sweet coldness heat without the magician's electric hand clay's heart might beat but wouldn't birth and death remain but brothers in defeat? Bits of Poetry (after Lafcadio Hearn)

1. Children's delighted fingers through a paper screen that's old — but now look how the wind comes to blow our hearts so cold. 2. What point now the two exquisite paper butterflies? My wife now dead a year. 3. I untie one small corner of the mosquito-net and the whole moon enters. 4. Rain heavy enough on the hat I stole — what of the scarecrow left in the field? 5. No longer unhappy at my broken window — oh scent of the plum-tree! 6. Boundaries on maps but here only flowers and the oblivious sea. 7. What tells me that my friend lies here? A wild dove's cry and ascending butterfly. Riverscape What word for the water reed broken tube drawn from mud by the magnet sun? Or river's ale-brown water that whispers against the sand? Spring leaves are green explosions frozen arched to points symmetrical as a ballerina's arms or clouds framed in the painter's assessing eye. The hills are slate and lilac smoke hazed heat mirages already rising. The river swallows shadow under the bridge. A one-legged gull wavers on its grassy ridge.