A WOMAN IN A BOOK

 

Surrounded on every side by a story

She sips her tea, apparently content

To be mistaken for an illustration. 

SHADOW'S SHADOW

 

My Great-Uncle Arnie was 

Loathsome but so rich that

His shadow had a shadow

Of its own -- a poor thing who

Could never get her timing

Right, stretching out at 

Noon and shrinking so as

To be almost invisible

And a trip-hazard when

The Sun was going down. It went

Missing at my Aunt Tamara's 

Wedding and was finally found

Sleeping in a heavy lead-crystal

Bowl that was meant to be 

Almost impossible to store.

PUNCTUATION

 

Gustave Flaubert paid so much attention to punctuation that

His commas and periods developed free will. 

Those not trapped in books when he died

Nor in his interminable letters fled through loose-shuttered windows

And are still at large. They live cautiously, taking small jobs;

Never staying long. For a few weeks one of my poems

Enjoyed a small degree of perfection, hosting a comma

Flaubert had put in and removed no fewer than three times

In a near-final draft of Bouvard and Pécuchet

APPRECIATION

 

Due to a misunderstanding, a print of the actor 

Ichikawa Danjûrô II  has lately been hung beside

A painting of St. Justina who is Patron of Padua

And stands in for St. Mark when Mark takes time off

From being Patron of Venice. As per her contract

Justina is shown as a  peerlessly beautiful blonde

With a long sword transfixing her breast.

After weeks the second Danjûrô -- not a timid man --

Breaks the silence between them and asks

"What master stabbed you right through the body

Without leaving a single trace of blood?"

"I've wondered about that too," she answers;

"He looked a very ordinary man."

FOREST

 

Some of the village's dead -- 

No one knows how they're chosen -- 

Wind up in the forest Tatsu-no-mori 

You can visit them if you want

They don't speak but seem 

Reasonably content. Lately,

An old person from Minamizawa said 

That if you go by the forest late at night, 

There are two unknown girls 

Standing around aimlessly.

Perhaps some other town's

Forest of the dead is full

Or has been closed by the authorities.

RETICENCE

 

In Boston there is an Egyptian ivory statuette

Carved 4000 years ago of a nude woman

Smiling and resembling my grandmother Esther

So I asked her ghost about this. She was pleased

I'd conjured her but said only that whatever

Happens in Ancient Egypt stays in Ancient Egypt.

COMPETITIVE SPIRIT

 

My mother's death dropped by on her anniversary

To remind me that since she's now eighteen

She has only fifty-two years left

In which to eclipse Sugawara no Michizane

Who became a god seventy years after his death.

"I'm not sure," she said, "what sort of god to be;

Send me some prayers so I can see which ones

I feel like answering."