Where Joy Comes From, Where It Goes
After Wang Wei
Alone I come back to this pinyon, how it clings
to a seam of stone, precarious. Resin
on the fingers; turpentine, with a hint of orange:
what water tastes like to the dead?
A chickadee pulls a seed from a cone. Look away,
look back, she’s no longer there. All my thoughts –
how I can’t, how I can, how it’s too late – dissolve.
Wind moves the sun across pinyon branches.
Spirals of light: how they hold the mind together,
how they take it apart…
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 