At Foyers

                                                        for Jessica

           

Donnelly sat in the kitchen at Foyers

at midnight

while an actress

home from her play

just stood at the stove

lost in thought

making herself cocoa

the household

asleep in their rooms

it was late

he was annoyed she was there

disturbing solitude

oblivious that poetry

had come to life

in front of him

just a memory now

that actress

so Donnelly’s assets increase

as his life winds down

and can shards of broken poetry

be reassembled    

made whole    containers

for meditations?

or will we know of him just these scraps?

through Google  

Donnelly searched the net for names

sometimes found

an old friend

untimely

dead

                                    © Dick Russell, 2013, 2016

                                Death

A fisherman

rested last night

at the foot of these cliffs

watching the sun set

at dawn   he drew water

from a sparkling river

collected dry bamboo

for a fire

prepared tea

before I awoke

he had packed and gone

while sunlight burnt off

this damp low fog

do I hear him rowing

away     pulsating sounds

magnified by mist

echoing from cliffs

under a rainbow

I look after him

down the fjord

white clouds

above far cliffs

chase each other

                        Liu Tsung Yuan

                        translated by David Sen

                            revisions by Dick Russell

©  Dick Russell, 2013

                                   A Problem of Translation

A hawker is not

         a man with a falcon on his wrist

is not

         a man with a tray of wrapped candy bars

is maybe

         a baseball player spitting at the plate

         before hitting a homer

or

is Homer

that man unrolling a scroll

standing to one side

conjuring images

©  Dick Russell, 2013

         Now is No Time

                   A look  full glance

                    the head turned round

                    returned

                    by a walking girl

                    swinging her skirt

                    we follow through

                    the evening street

                    now fallow

                    with the summer heat

                    lone girl

                    bare feet walking

                    turning in a doorway

                    out of the heat

                    and passion

                       simmers

                    in the street

                    thinking all the time

                    ideas all the time tangle

                    a blue pool

                    lies in the lap

                    of green willows

                    a synthetic idea

                    compounded by

                    a bridge

                    bone china

                    lulling labels

                    advertise fables

                    now is no time

                           ©  Dick Russell, 2013