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Report

Beneath a ceiling of
heavy clouds
the butter lettuce
seems much too green
as if the field were
lit from below.

Hawks scream, killdeer
cry—
the world is pouring
out of its house
and made us for each
other
to become multilingual
in anguish
until time to report
back.

I wish to report that
I heard the voice
of Mozart's third hand
singing in a piano
which made the bright
music dark,
more beautiful, more
earthly.

 

Timmy

I have heard last words of the dying.
My grandfather asked for the time and said, Oh.
My father pled, Stay with me, the only fear-sound
I ever heard escape his mouth. But Timmy was silent
and more vivid than the scream of a horse
painted by Pablo Picasso.

 

A Possible Survivor

When the moon has gone I fly on alone

—W.S. Merwin

I was taken by a
misreading—
When the mind has gone I fly on alone.

But it was the gone moon
no longer traveling with a curlew
into the night.

Still, I was freed for a moment, working
the high air, everything
my kind.

 

sk

 

Richard Jarrette is the author of Beso the Donkey (MSU Press 2010) currently being translated into Chinese by Prof. Yun Wang. He lives in Los Olivos, California and is also considered a Western North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountain Regional writer after formative boyhood years there. He cites W.S. Merwin as a primary influence since the late sixties as well as the Tang Dynasty poets of China. He also writes screenplays and has worked in theater.