And then, two more.
Two more poems from this book.
One called, "Clear Night."
In Chinese mythology, the cassia flower
was on the moon, supposed to be on the moon.
It was also on the Earth, a cassia tree.
But it was also mythologically on the--
people wanted to say lived on the moon.
It didn't.
It grew on the moon.
"Clear Night"
Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine on the side deck
and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and birdsong.
A cassia flower falls.
I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music
wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.
And the wind says "What?" to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings
of death, say "What?" to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.