Shi or Studies in Chinese
Poetry for Today

"Clear moon pours bright light at night
and crickets sing in the eastern wall.
The Big Dipper's jade handle points to midwinter,
all the star's incredibly clear."
  – from Nineteen Ancient Poems









At city edge ancient glacial drumlins.
Late spring ponds full as steel ladles.
Outside the forest grounds highways in all directions
drone on out of sight like hidden crickets.

Shi and I always walk away from the city
and into the pages of marshland where geese
fly in and out of the linen marsh reeds
steady as pen lines margin to margin.


We find two pecking away at the gravel trails for seeds.
One makes eye contact and stops, spreads its wings
as if in fine pageantry; her black neck bobs
as the silhouette of a slender wrist behind a silk screen.