It's Still Life

A Song Dynasty poem: “Shuǐlóngyín (“Chant of the Water Dragon”) is a classical Chinese ci tune-pattern: a lyric form built on alternating short and long lines, originally meant to be sung. This “Lyric of Absence” poem follows a rhythmic ‘skeleton,’ giving it the rise and fall of a melody.”

To an English Garden

It was the rain wanting.
Your thirst. Storms of dust
from all that came before it.
All yesterdays before.
Air breathing dry as fire.
Diamond-hard etched the ground,
skin tight, taut and mute.
You, watcher of wilt and darkened death
refuser of echoed brittle pleas,
of aged grey and spindled gnarled roots.
It was rain’s sky-full generosity,
wind spinning sheets, fingered floods.
Tints and palettes, colours refilling purples, pinks.

Scarlet tongues licked the sky,
clouds, once greedy, poured.
Cosmos songs to crow and magpie,
their wings splice their cries
and stitch morning to the sunrise.
Garden breathes deep oboe tones,
earth drinks in its emptied fill.
Roots unweave their ache at last,
the air refills with green.
Low and high made whole again,
I listen: rain’s velvet voice,
absence is made of song,
emptiness burns to flame.