This poem is called "It."
Subtitle, "Reading Blake in a Cowshed during a Typhoon
on an Island in the East China Sea."
Cloud, cloud, cloud hurls up and on over.
Bison herds stampeding for Shantung.
Fists of rain flail half down the length of the floor.
Bamboo hills bend and regain.
Fields follow the laws of waves.
Puppy scuds in wet, squats on the slat bed.
On the edge of a spiral centered 500 miles
southwest, reading in English, the way the words join,
the weights, the warps.
I know what it means.
My language is home.
Mind front's meeting bite back at each other,
whirl up a mother tongue.
100-knot gusts dump palms over somebody's morning cream.
Cowshed skull, its windows open, swallows and strains
gulfs of wild-slung, quivering ocean air.
Breathe it.
Taste it.
How it feeds the brain.
[TENTATIVE APPLAUSE]
I'm not done yet.
[LAUGHTER]