Why do Japanese Carps Know About Conscience and the Soul, Principal Conscientious Objector?

 

Under gentle leaves

Of Oriental maples,

Plaiting shadows

Into pleasant fans,

 

Japanese carps

Keep on coming up

To take a whiff of breath

From the air of the noon

 

Which would otherwise

Be fatal—and I wonder

Was ever any Buddha born

From any of such fish—

 

Locked for ornament

In this closed-in place

Where, to no end,

Waters never cease

 

To give to breeze

 A muted clap?

But then again

I catch myself

 

Thinking in my head:

Why would they need

A Buddha if they’d never

Moved against

 

Their innate self

As many humans do

Or are made to be—

And live an early death?

Early in the Morning Before Sunrise I Went out In Search of Poem

 

In those moments

That are aberrant,

Yet peerless

And stellar,

 

A timeless breeze

Will move

Into an abrupt

Freeze of time.

 

Just as to see

The matchless,

Carved and polished

 

On ancients’ marble white,

Is to join and grasp

That wisdom’s murmur

 

Of something eternal

In the long dead

Sculptor’s mind.

April Cut through With a Blade Of Japanese Art

 

Amid April’s colored breaths,

A Japanese carp’s silhouette

Makes its winding way

Through the water shades—

 

Gold-striped blades of flame

Carving the glass tip

Of the pond’s  

Redeeming silence—

 

Passerby sealed

With marks of loneliness

Are afraid to violate

 

The sanctity of each

Other’s pristine views,

With lines unbroken—

Beauty of Spring 2025 Amid the Deafening Silence After the West Installed Al Qaeda in Damascus

Through flowerless winter

Southern camellias

Survived in bloom,

Enduring to welcome

Spring first warmer days—

 

Spanish moss beards

 Endear naked oaks

And swing off long leave pines

While on the ground

 

Azaleas bursted

Into wakeful dreams

But I find the shady pink

To be their Queen—

“We Will Need to Bomb Iran,” Trump Just Announced

Inland from the ocean

A wall of clouds

Glides away—

 

Gathering

Underneath

The grain of rain,

The sunset dust

Has begun to turn

The air of the hour

Into a piece of art—

 

As  blooming pines

Took one by one

A different,

 Deeper breath.

Ad Fontes!

 

From Greeks
women still
draw pose,
clue,
heart—

fair enough,
once
art stood
fine,
not crude—

no dress
rivaled
nudes’
forms,

frozen
in stone,
hoisted
at agoras,
stoas,

guiding
strays
back
home.