A small heart panics

Little robins cock their heads when I pass and stop. “Hello.” I move. They dart. The forest birds know not to trust. — This is poem 96 in the lead up to the total of 104. The project is to write two poems a week across 52 weeks (i.e. a year). I reasoned, if I

Two Summer Poems: one about fruit, the other about birds

Pakistan’s Gold, a poem about a mango’s journey, explores the relay of fruit exports that brings the taste of summer from one place to the ingesting of summer in another. Twenty Auspicious Cranes, presents very plainly two experiences of coincidence, captured and formulated as wonders and then taken for signs.

Twenty Auspicious Cranes

Twenty Auspicious Cranes, 1112 On the day after my birthday, 2013 The Emperor Huizong opened his palace to the ever-busy common folk. I sat on my bedroom floor. Twenty white cranes appeared flying in the sky; two alighted upon the palace gate. A brown-winged bird darted into my room; there he hovered, over my bed.