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M. Kei
it's hard to be
an honest man when
pinched by
past mistakes and
current needs
the garden path
too crowded, so we
turn upstream
and search for
Wyeth's 'Roar'
hiking through
the autumn woods,
my son and I
climb over the fallen fence
and into the world
Not being Amish,
I can flip the bird
at motorists
who cut off buggies
and frighten the horses
contemplating
Nureyev's black jacket
and ballet slippers,
how small the man
how great the skill
the tidy ranks
of soldiers lined up
for inspection
how loud the bugle
in the cemetery
an October day
of pumpkins and corn,
horse droppings steaming,
Amish schoolgirls
dead on the floor
turning down
a side street in
an unfamiliar town,
I stumble across a garden
of childhood bluebells
the fireflies
didn't wait for me
this evening;
flitting across a
night without love
no wind tonight
a puddle of silver
in the bay's darkness,
a full moon
off the port bow
the stone gristmill
broad on the starboard bow,
stories
falling into the bay
from its motionless wheel
stitch my shroud
tie granite to my ankles
bury me
deep in the heart
of the Chesapeake
autumn evening
alone in this
motel room with
someone
named 'Gideon'
autumn afternoon
if only we had
as much to say
as this heron
standing silent
the sweep of
the revolving door
brushes souls
in and out
spinning into nothingness
the shattered bones
of old loves
haunt
the sea that
surrenders all
the thousand
arms of Kannon
reach even here
to this rock
to this poet
it is no woman
this moon of men
sailor in
the great sea
of longing
drudger's breeze:
twenty knots and snow --
the oysterboats
blow out of Dogwood Cove
and into the bay
potato soup
a little too thin,
autumn creeps
silently among
the pine trees
like pigeons
around your feet,
I too peck at
what you have dropped
and forgotten
M. Kei lives on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, USA. He crews aboard a skipjack, a traditional wooden sailboat used to fish for oysters. He also serves as a member of the board of directors for a local maritime museum. His poetry has been accepted for publication by Eucalypt (AUS), Kokako (NZ), Gusts (CAN), American Tanka, Modern English Tanka, Wisteria, Bottle Rockets, Red Lights, Ribbons, Moonset, Nisqually Delta Review, Haiku Harvest, Lynx, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Simply Haiku, Mayfly, and others. His work also appears in the anthologies Fire Pearls, Sixty Sunflowers, To Find the Moon, and Haiku Miscellany (CRO). He moderates the Kyoka Mad Poems e-list and is also the Editor of Fire Pearls: Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart, on the theme of love and passion, now available from www.Lulu.com/firepearls. M. Kei can be contacted through his blog at kujakupoet.blogspot.com.
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