Poems & Stories
A BOOK UPON THE SHELF
The time is noon
Empty cradles fill the room
Hot November under my skin
Distant cousins and next of kin
We await the inevitable moon
Over the mountains, echoing destiny
For every other living thing
In hidden places in the mind
Foraging and hunting blind
To catch a thief on deadline.
Will you share with me, Jade-eye?
And fill the void across the sky?
And drink the wine
That seeps through our silence?
It reconfirms our noncompliance
And I alone survived
a tenancy in your house of strife.
That twist of fate, a subtle knife,
Growth. Rebirth. Death and life.
I saw in my dream
The mask of sanity
Figures in the light, stripped of vanity
In the shining city bright
In my father’s shuttered den
A many-coated man and I
Share the secrets of our origins
Not the lives we leave behind
Nor the years that we condemn
Mean anything to the rest of them.
Not the babes who left the nest
Nor the souls that we divide
Will remember us after we’ve died.
Now the moon is singing
Full and far and wide
The new year is ringing
And I am still alive.
But only then I realized
the reflection of my self
I am just a book upon the shelf.