The Unseen
My wife circles the winter pond in Madison, Indiana, having spent the day with her father in the nursing home adjacent. He knows his daughter, but grabs at thin air to touch a fruit tree, a dog, a tombstone no one else can see. Marvels as she walks right through them. She tells me this as her words rise invisibly through the cold steam of her breath to travel via cell phone towers to my ear in California. Though I can’t see her, I know she is there.
Moon of the Red Cliffs
The full moon is alight over the Red Cliffs of the Yangtze River. The poet Su Shi tires of his scholar friends, and the artists, rhapsodizing a famous battle eight centuries earlier—here, under this same moon. One must know a sword as a sword to write of a sword, he huffs, know blood red on its moonlit tip. Eyeing his friends in the long boat, Su Shi oars them silently beneath the hulking cliffs, takes the knife hidden in his sleeve, wounds the thumb of each—bids them to write a poem in their own blood. Only then does scholar and painter and poet see the dead under the cliffs.
Poem of the Body
Fujiwara falls asleep on the veranda of the Shinto shrine devoted to the patron deity of poets. It has been a long journey, here, from the palace. One sandal broken, feet muddy, heart troubled. His poems like still-born birds, unable to fly from the egg. Why are his verses filled with dead blossoms, rain that will not fall, lovers that do not kiss? Perhaps here, at the shrine, single stick of incense smoking in the rice bowl, the kami of poetry will find him. Make life in the palace possible again. Instead, he falls asleep—and in his dream, the ghost of the old man he’d soon enough become frowns. Dips an ink brush in the mud, writes a single kanji character on the sole of each foot, one for the belly, the heart, each shoulder and knee—till he becomes the poem he seeks.
Dane Cervine’s new poetry book is entitled, Kung Fu of the Dark Father. Previous books include How Therapists Dance (2013), and, The Jeweled Net of Indra (2007)—all from Plain View Press. His poems have won or been finalists for awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, the Atlanta Review, Caesura, and been nominated for a Pushcart. His work appears in a diverse range of publications, including The SUN, the Hudson Review, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, Pedestal Magazine, anthologies, short film, animation, newspapers, including a fine press broadside of his poem Clay Feet from Sam Amico’s Middle Earth press. Visit his website at: www.DaneCervine.typepad.com or drop him a line at: [email protected]
My wife circles the winter pond in Madison, Indiana, having spent the day with her father in the nursing home adjacent. He knows his daughter, but grabs at thin air to touch a fruit tree, a dog, a tombstone no one else can see. Marvels as she walks right through them. She tells me this as her words rise invisibly through the cold steam of her breath to travel via cell phone towers to my ear in California. Though I can’t see her, I know she is there.
Moon of the Red Cliffs
The full moon is alight over the Red Cliffs of the Yangtze River. The poet Su Shi tires of his scholar friends, and the artists, rhapsodizing a famous battle eight centuries earlier—here, under this same moon. One must know a sword as a sword to write of a sword, he huffs, know blood red on its moonlit tip. Eyeing his friends in the long boat, Su Shi oars them silently beneath the hulking cliffs, takes the knife hidden in his sleeve, wounds the thumb of each—bids them to write a poem in their own blood. Only then does scholar and painter and poet see the dead under the cliffs.
Poem of the Body
Fujiwara falls asleep on the veranda of the Shinto shrine devoted to the patron deity of poets. It has been a long journey, here, from the palace. One sandal broken, feet muddy, heart troubled. His poems like still-born birds, unable to fly from the egg. Why are his verses filled with dead blossoms, rain that will not fall, lovers that do not kiss? Perhaps here, at the shrine, single stick of incense smoking in the rice bowl, the kami of poetry will find him. Make life in the palace possible again. Instead, he falls asleep—and in his dream, the ghost of the old man he’d soon enough become frowns. Dips an ink brush in the mud, writes a single kanji character on the sole of each foot, one for the belly, the heart, each shoulder and knee—till he becomes the poem he seeks.
Dane Cervine’s new poetry book is entitled, Kung Fu of the Dark Father. Previous books include How Therapists Dance (2013), and, The Jeweled Net of Indra (2007)—all from Plain View Press. His poems have won or been finalists for awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, the Atlanta Review, Caesura, and been nominated for a Pushcart. His work appears in a diverse range of publications, including The SUN, the Hudson Review, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, Pedestal Magazine, anthologies, short film, animation, newspapers, including a fine press broadside of his poem Clay Feet from Sam Amico’s Middle Earth press. Visit his website at: www.DaneCervine.typepad.com or drop him a line at: [email protected]