Ren
The scent of red lotus
fades The jade mat chills
You might send an elegant letter
as blossoms fall and idle sadness is hard
to wipe from the brow
A traveller will not depart
until the Yang-Pass song is sung
over and over until
complete Farewell Farewell
Migrating geese shape the Chinese character
人 ren as in person human
as if to suggest they fly
to deliver a letter
lush with details of one memory Memory
that one sad kiss Beauty in one
unruly promise and time
an impossible dance Still
any faint thunder may hold the truth
Red Steam Rising
-photograph by Carole Bracy
August is ending and it's cold
in the mountains, wet and slick
on this curve of road,
until morning light heats, churns
the greasy surface into mist
within one vague
promise made in summer.
Autumn's vibrant leaves
red and gold will soon arrive,
twist and curl on chill wind, the faint
scent of snow and wood smoke
until they fall, crisp
on the land, gift the ache
Alcohol Ink on Ceramic Tile
Across Lake Champlain in South Hero
as well as further north
in Montreal autumn holds a trace of winter
The artist lives far from where I complete
this day revising a line
while leaning on the seawall rail
The artist lives in Corvallis Oregon
In her ink and tile
I find my ease A full white moon
in a quiet autumn sky
Broken Mirror
Soon the New Year
No snow but wind
rain and icy roads
We are quiet at home
Another year another
winter without snow
at least not much
It's predicted the earth
will continue to warm
An old broken mirror
under the bed
That Letter I Wrote You One Autumn Morning
Start with the wrong tone
Consider all that fractured syntax
impossible to correct
Add new words better punctuation
This far past midnight
another day to remain wrong
edge me further away
from ever nearly being right again
Michael Carrino holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College. He is a retired English lecturer at the State University College at Plattsburgh, New York, where he was co-founder/poetry editor of the Saranac Review. His publications include Some Rescues, (New Poets Series, Inc.) Under This Combustible Sky, (Mellen Poetry Press), Café Sonata, (Brown Pepper Press), Autumn’s Return to the Maple Pavilion (Conestoga Press), By Available Light (Guernica Editions), Always Close, Forever Careless (Kelsay Books), Until I’ve Forgotten, Until I’m Stunned (Kelsay Books), In No Hurry (Kelsay Books), Natural Light (Kelsay Books), and The Scent of Some Lost Pleasure (one of three authors) in Conestoga Zen 3 Anthology, (Conestoga Zen Press), as well as individual poems in numerous journals and reviews.
Beautiful poems....
ReplyDelete