Litany
A maple leaf is
impaled on a rusty barb-
wire fence and the wind
has been muttering, under
its breath, all its usual
drunken litany of threats.
Pawn Shop Window
I should tell you that
while you were admiring your
own reflection in
the pawn shop window, a bright
red feather has been circling
you on a whirlpool of wind.
Coyotes / Crickets / Whippoorwills
The night is alive
with the three-part harmony
of coyotes, crickets
and whippoorwills (with the odd,
sporadic accomp’niment
of high-caliber gunfire).
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Author’s note: Bussokusekika is a rare form of Japanese poetry that consists of six lines written in a 5-7-5-7-7-7 mora pattern. Arising during the Nara period, the form had essentially died out by the Heian period. For centuries, the only existing examples were the twenty one poems inscribed beside the stone Buddha Foot monument at Yakushi Temple in Nara, Japan, by an unknown author around 753 CE. Though not of particular literary value, the pieces—written in Man’yōgana, a medieval syllabic script—have religious significance: the first seventeen praise Buddha and his life while the last four extol the four-fold Buddhist path and advise against worldly attachments.
