Completion

Winter Renga with Andrew Schelling

torn cloud and snow
blown across high glacial rock--
then note of a lone horn

in winter bands of ewes
roaming alpine valleys

even in cities
their tender hooves soothe me
past taxis, frozen slush, hard moon

a cab driver returns a sack of
diamonds left in a trunk

in my heart
love's bright facets, though rain's
washed out the love poem

tired sonnets & lackluster odes fall
short of summer showers' beauty

the road of poetry
is dark, bitter, & solitary --
Hah-hah!

prizing a shared connection
tidings sent across the currents

this morning I see
"the person you were born"
in your left eye tears, sing to me

bird songs on waking, the body takes
in its first glass of distilled water

drinking the air
of North America after
a long journey East

he recalls October apricots
sun-dried near the army cantonment

in the valley of Cashmere
Turkish lokum poured from
the autumn harvest

we call it Full Corn Moon
respite from a nation at war

keeping an ear to
earth, the truth of global
warming, polar caps & bears

wild fire, bark beetle
from here to Alaska's tundra

at a roadside lumberyard
piles of cut logs squared
stacks of two-by-fours

ah, ancestors—
the Siouxland cottonwood’s tiny buds

on NCAR mesa
by a flowering prickly pear
she laughs & weeps for her father

the drum of a woodland flame-
back hammering out its heart