Not all wounds bleed.

The sky opens upon pale

impossible blues, closes,

sewn shut in cloud and rain;

this place looks like hope

when it wears out:

knotted trees dropping fruit,

red-stained, bruised, pavement-bound,

thought does not enter them;

a panel has shut quietly upon us,

bringing us into depth and shadow,

frames cracked by the cold.

Rain comes through the roof, here;

coals play dead in the kitchen.

The cricket in the corner

needles the silence, says

  knowing the world  

        means dissolving its walls

weeds will pry through cracks

just to prove the world is decay,

living just a temporary madness.

*

We care for the departed

with eyes of ripened fruit,

handle their ashes in urns,

crack-riddled shells

that speak of history

in ghosts and smoke,

rice husks burnt at noon,

in dirt and ashes drunk

at the end of the day.

This city is a magnet

for those drawn

to our strange fires,

strange ghosts lost at sea;

even when you see this place

at a distance or close up,

oblique, straight on, afar,

blue-skied or sighing in cloud

like a lover reclining,

it changes yet again,

like life, love, ever moving

down to its core, knocked

from its delicate balance:

a weed patch in the mist

a seed shaped like a knife

*

But these are just locust words,

brittle shells, dry emptiness.

A whole world is revealed

in a vacant lot,

its surface emptied but

hiding full lives below.

Rooted, underground,

this is no city for angels;

this is only a hollowness,

the slam of a door that

echoes down passages

to a coincidence of roots,

a tangle of confessions.

*

shimenawa

paper lightning

twigs and bitter citrus

We let the ropes of fate bind us,

move us forward or back,

even as we tamper with them,

get tangled in their coils.

I named all the sparrows

that settle on the gravel,

here, at my feet. But I

can’t recall which one’s which.

I’d bang the side of the house

but for the hornet’s nest up there.

I remind myself not to eat

the poison fruit,

even if the bell rings out

– clear –

then fades to silence

*

These invisible cities

made of wind and cloud,

a hint of rainfall and

the sound of thunder,

radiating peace,

we can only approach

lost in reverie like this,

trying to write paradise,

out of oak root and yellow iris,

in half-crazed, wild verse

consumed like petals,

unforgiven, blind,

wandering dry riverbeds

in half-lives half-lived,

with just a memory

of persimmons to guide us.

[Editor’s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from D. A. Straith during our annual Kickstarter.]