MAKING DO

The roosters having urgent business
Which demanded they be elsewhere,
Monsters perched on low branches
Caracolling to wake us. The jays
Were in conference; djinns had to steal
Shiny objects incautiously revealed.
The dead refused to acknowledge us;
The mayor called for volunteers
To rattle chains and haunt the living.

ANOTHER OF AESRED'S

The Chinese poet Li Po often wandered

Into my father’s stories. He’d enter juggling

Three oranges, a rooster and the moon

Or telling about a night spent failing

To outdrink his shadow.