The Paddock Review

Sumi-e

Tonight we will lie down together, pressed body
to body the way leaf presses leaf, waiting
for the moon to rise. All our veins will be visible
through our skin, and because in the darkness
we will be as green as the moon, or as leaves,

no one will see us. The owl will mistake our cries
for light, the paths of our blood for shadows
cast by bare branches. Do not be afraid if,
like the pages of a closed book on the library
shelf, congruent on all surfaces, we cannot

be read, even by each other. Remember
winds and storms and breathing in the folded caves
and hollows of our changeable weather, stories
written in tides and the smell of salt, how lips
leave the intricate impressions of flowers,

red blooms on ivory, an alphabet lost long ago
to voices. Whatever is written in those languages
can still be learned exactly with the fingers.
So it is with us. Our scribbling fades into each
other’s skins like a sort of invisible ink.

There is no need to decipher anything. Each letter is
the picture of a sound, a black blossom on rice paper.
Some day a calligrapher will make a brush out of
your soft hair, and paint two dark curves, one
beside the other, almost but not quite touching.

……
This poem is from the book Night Music by B. J. Buckley (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/night-music-by-b-j-buckley/

Night Music’s beautiful #poems explore the intimate, intricate #connections of #humans with each other and with the #natural #world. In first-person voices which mediate upon, reflect, and inhabit the works of 18^th century Japanese woodcut artist Hiroshige; 19^th century Polish composer Friedrich Chopin; and 20^th century Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, these poems traverse landscapes both internal and external, physical and emotional. All the sights, sounds, fragrances, tastes, and textures of our fragile world, all the vulnerable nuances of our hearts and spirits, are here.