Null white

Snow blizzards have no

breadth, no height, no depth;

The space in your head

loses dimensions;

Gravity’s taut string

Slacks to elastic;

Land-level lines blur;

You have no sense

of what’s up or down,

of traversing round;

Your chin is chilled meat;

An avalanche could

Scour your existence;

The snow tricks your mind;

There are no way-marks

in the null white space;

You've no place to hide

save your exposed soul.

Waki

Tide-mark grit-lines beach-edge the sea-long road;

The road glows wet in the skiff-coils of rain;

The stump-shadows of hills are dull as dough;

Two choughs chatter red on a castle wall;

Yes, I know a single field holds the world;

If only I made time to be, and see

What I have not seen before or anew:

The silent sun-glitter of granite flecks;

The froth of whitethorn in whistling hedges;

The milky-pale peak in cloud-mist and snow.

I am now a vagrant skin finger-tracing

the silent soul-mask of your Noh-play face,

hearing the blank-ma-spaces between words.

You chant your true self in the second act.

What's the word?

When tallow candles lit cave walls,

Imagination flicked through film.

On language looms we weaved our words

For the mind-marrowed images

Mapped by memory’s own spindle.

From gap to gap, from ridge to ridge,

From rock to rock, from stream to stream,

We worded: for the bleach of snow,

The brash-blirt of rain, frisking gusts,

Land-lashing gales, feet blattering

Through water pools, a halo mist

Burring the moon, spawning fish nest-

rudding pebbles, a lake-like cess

Fair floshed with reeds. The uncanny.

But what’s the word for when hail-spears

Kill bees in the mouths of flowers?

Don’t tell me it is providence.

Mie Ikeno's magic words

Rippling the hill-rim’s ragged face,

in craving-motion ecstasy,

the god-of-morning kestrel sears

to the red-back vole his eye spears.

The gold light magics Mie's vineyard

into view on the rounded slope

of hill, her fudo in Honshu,

where she grows Chardonnay, Merlot,

And Pinot Noir from Bourgogne;

Where she quests for the unique.

Grape clusters flourish to the eye

in neatly trellised lines of green,

the glisk and gleam of berry skin

stained plump purple by streaming sun.

Her ground vibrates with particles

of warm sunbeam-love for pure fruits.

In owl-light dusk her winery

is a twinkling ark where the gods

of conviviality sip

grace-glasses of notes-rich pleasure.

Now dusk blends into dazzling dawn.

Mie speaks a thousand magic words;

Her warm wine-love words ripen grapes.
Clouds heal in a circle of sun.

Crab-apple tree

Hoar frost nips buttery daffodil coronas.

Slender blooms quiver yellow in otter water.

The fleece of the fat fretting foot-sure lambs is lank.

Finger-cold winter tries hard to snub fluffing spring.

The black yellow-eyed cat teases a tabby tom.

Nesting crows bend deadfall twigs to their beaks;

They caw harsh collective complaints at the furry flirts.

Mottled mackerel clouds crest unmown hill meadows.

Brush-hairs of sunlight varnish the tree barks with gold.

The oval ruffle-edged crab-apple leaves open,

Pointed to tip, fresh keen green upsides dappling stone.

A fringe-stirring wisp lifts milky-cheese undersides.

The buds surprise us with crimson and salmon pink.

White-pearl and yellow centres clamour for the eye.

Bees will buzz soon to full voluptuous flowers.

Branches promise scented summer pendulousness.

Autumn’s ripening will bring apple-wrestling robins.

On the bliss of lake Spring's soul sings a song of sky.
Ripples through rushes run, restless with love's longing.

Will on the hop

The whorl unsteadies in the whirl and wharve.  

The skip of ruin catches Will on the hop.

Like a gasping fish hopeless on a hook,

He waits for the gaff to flip him lifeless.

Truth is, he shoulders a sea of sadness

That washes him wordless back to Stratford.

Not even the shepherd sun herding high

The sheepy sky with shining rods of light

Can spin him a syllabic shoal of smiles.

A shadow self in a leached spot of time,

He broods on death, a hope-to-gloom cascade.

Beckett reminds him, what is terrible

Is to have thought. Indifferent Godot

Has a long white beard. Misericorde.

Lear sits in his chair of state, a hovel

On a heath, undone, unaccommodated,

His majesty scarred by his maker’s mark.

Belated, he learns the value of love;

But Cordelia's death leaves us hopeless.

Will’s iced soul gives out on a wheel of fire;

Gods sport with the circle he can’t complete.

Will sees the Dane

He skips Sunday service, since the preacher

Speaks his prayers like a scholar’s parrot.

Far from the leas and lanes and rushy streams

Of Arden, he rows his boat in moonlight,

Past floating barges, and ghostly walled houses

On the banks of the Thames, haunted by echoes

Of Essex and the foul stink of dung yards.

Wash-water slakes the slack mudbank hollows.

Counting with the river’s rhythm and pulse

Of brimming thuds of tide on bed-fast beams,

He moors his boat, catching the pirr-pawing

Breath of breeze. He tastes his lexis, new words.

Before him a wall - moss, some weeds, grass tufts -

Sheening with wild waves of watery light.

Above the wall, a smoky face swabs slops

Of spilt beer, sweeps wet leaves; his hoary head,

The haze-fire spectre of the misty gloom,

Peers, purgatorial, from the shadow

Of death’s vale; and shines his lighted lantern,

His hair quiffed like a bull’s tuft by the breeze.

Quick as a tinkerbell gives on hard stone,

Will sees a dead unhomed bodiless Dane

Outgloom the frantic night in Elsinore.

Clouds shadow, the river slogs, a cock crows.