Finalist : Terrain.org 8th Annual Contest in Poetry
Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too…
— Sei Shōnagon
1
Is it for love, for hate
I kill the fly and let the moth
circle the bathroom light?
2
Can you tell me,
unwavering
as oat grass?
3
Where is the low bowl of moon
spilling autumn’s
nakedness?
4
Who’s imitating who—
Me or the folds of dogwood buds
concealing our pleasure?
5
Geese
trace the surface of the water’s
deepening
6
If loss could be measured
like brilliance, last bits of sun
on the disappearing hills
7
While seven million people sleep
a few hawk moths search for
crimson columbine
in near-extinct starlight
8
One foot in Holocene muck,
Hold tight the kite string—
Daytime moon
9
Cicadas all day.
Crickets all night.
Who are you calling
changed?
10
Between
decay and
renewal,
the owl light
Notes on this Poem Series
This poem series is informed by the Japanese literary genre of zuihitsu (lit, “following the brush”), which was invented by the poet Sei Shōnagon, whose Pillow Book, completed in the year 1002, chronicles her life in the Heian court. In the Japanese literary tradition, zuihitsu more generally refers to a collection of notes, fragments, and observations about the writer’s personal life and immediate environment. In later centuries, zuihitsu contained the author’s reflections on the impermanence of the material world. Today, zuihitsu ranges from poetic fragments to short prose pieces.
The quote that serves as epigraph comes from a line of Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book, as translated by Ivan Morris.
Deborah Fass was born and raised in Los Angeles, went to Japan with a postgraduate Japanese Department of Education Research Fellowship (Literature), and now lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has won an Academy of American Poets Prize and has been featured on NPR. Her recent poetry collection is Where the Current Catches (Island Verse Editions, 2017).
Header photo by arthaximmo, courtesy Pixabay.
