A Few Strokes of Ink

"A few strokes of ink and there it is.
Great stillness of white fog,
waking up in the mountains,
geese calling,
a well hoist cracking,
and the droplets forming on the eaves."
– Milosz, "Reading the Japanese Poet Issa"





Not everybody's days pass by the wishes of spectrum.
What the hemlock across the street
might look like ablaze by a noon sun,
as it joints hands with the riverside foliage,
puffs blazing green of the crystals that shine
off the backs of passing red wings.
Renoir, Monet, Manet, all the rest, may have gone mad for such hours.
We plant our gardens for both the fruit and its canvas.
Back here there is a terra cotta sun pattern
chiseled into the garage wall and by late afternoon
it is the sun that radiates the sun.
King Tut plant stalks bob back and forth
like long hands introducing the scene.
There is a small crack between houses to the south
that reveals a wedge of blue lake.
Is it water? Is it the pulse of color that is reflected
onto a mass we have come to call liquid?
When I walked along the lake just yesterday
I followed a narrow trail
that has been cut by years of foot traffic.
Over the bank lay thick trunks
that had overturned many years ago,
black on this side in shadow.
Underneath, the still dapples of duckweed,
blazing green, sunlit, like apple skin,
sagging among the pools of watercolors.