by Pavel Chichikov
So many mowers – sounds of engine rooms –
Though motorless the air-borne insects
Scatter among larkspur in the garden
Green larkspur, not full-grown now
With buds of yellow buttons on the tops –
Feathery pagoda towers above buttercups
Grass mown down, weeds mown down
But not too far away green silent water flows
Between a high bank and a low one
There of straight-spined tulip poplars
Tulip-figured blossoms fall
Green cups and crimson-yellow hearts
The stream in glass reflection
Fills the moving sky from side to side
Without a sound, heavy, frictionless
Beside the low-banked stream a seated one,
Straight-backed as the trees – absorbed
By water passing, spread in coarse reflection
Then, said the moving river, is it only You
Is it only You I show the sky
And touch with tulip blossoms?
Down through many levels, down
I wander among larkspur in a garden
And no one sees except the ones who look
But here is where I rest, but here
Is where I watch the wide sky overhead
Reflected in the narrow moving river
Visit Pavel's website at Grey Owl Press.