nature poetry

We live in drought
   As summer sings to fall
My wandering clothes
   Have filled with filth through all
 
A sunny view
  Along the road I came
To pray for peace
   On a night of calming rain
 
The rooftop tiles
   Have washed with water’s lash
The rusted drains
   Have carried off the ash
 
Along the harbor east
   I walk as water flows
Perhaps somewhere
   There’s someone else who knows
 
My heart is clear
   As air begins to chill
Another land
   Contains desires still

at the bottom of the forest
within the dark pearl
where we have come to rest
from echoes and voices
 
so still
the universe has barely cracked
and the grass stays silent

seeds
impregnate the earth
 
whispering and loving its children
grown among the wandering souls
 
each morning in spring
where it is quiet
 
where we sit in silence
to behold the morning sun

the forest grows green
why all this rain?
 
the tears
in the wet adventure
 
planted seeds
in the abandoned woods
 
growing like the wind
which carries the wolves
 
your eyes alone
open in the dark

This wind will weave
   The cry of howling thieves
As calming rain
   Unfolds on golden grain
 
A thousand sheaves
   A million fallen leaves
And still these plains
   Will fill with bamboo canes
 
 
Copyright (c) 2016 by Frank Watson. Loosely translated from Lu Shiheng’s “花落.”

For Boris and Miona
 
They find a garden lush with plum-air scents
As spring sun filters through the dew-dust leaves
And subtle sighs arise while fruit ferments,
For Eden enters Earth when minds conceive.
 
Within the garden deep an oak tree grows,
Preserving plum and fruit from sudden squalls
With roots that sink in soil where winds oppose,
To keep the flowers fresh as flurries fall.
 
Emerging from primordial chaos fair,
This Earth now holds the veins where plum wine flows:

This cauldron carries the mist
Of a hundred singing spirits
 
Who wrap around
Entwined in a halo
 
Between
The heavens and the earth
The sun and the moon
 
As we breathe the dust
To inhabit a world
Of darkness and light
 
Clinging on
For ten thousand years
 
Dissolved in a drop
And an ocean that never ends
 
 
Frank Watson
 

Meng Haoran
 
This anchored boat’s astir in fog and breeze,
As sunset rends my fears up once again,
But as the sky descends beneath the trees,
The river, moon, and quiet become my friends.

The moon has shadowed me, like stillborn air
Along a country road, adrift in threads,
Behind a worn out wheel, the pedals bare,
As time leaves nothing here but cast off dead.
 
I share these words with clouds in wind-washed treads,
Where rock-strewn shores in riddled dreams belie
And time has spun in tight a spider’s web
Of figures etched in deep the dusk-drawn sky.
 
With this in mind I set aside my clothes,
Now freshly pressed for travels lost, to where
The door is shut and all my business goes—

as fog hangs over
the tops of buildings
touched by limbs
of bare-branched trees
 
in awe
I feel the autumn morning
this winter
 
in Manhattan