Fives Poems and a Sonnet
Soon I'll move to Denmark
Whether I can say
Nothing is rotten
in the state today
Where even from a small hotel
I can see the sea
Or find shelter behind a berm
Against a winter wind
MY mind's made up
I will settle in
And write hokko
until peace comes
and again I can walk
the long lane with Bashō
and going home again
to a smaller pond
where adventure no longer
calls me—meaning
i can no longer be—
or bear to be—a Dane
This morning
made the same tracks
I made yesterday
Love was
not an easy game to play
but followed anyway
Parenting no easier
but put one foot
ahead of the other
Illness marched me
up the hill and down again
until almost free
of the great trek
that now holds me
in its ever-loving arms
On the first trek
what was lacking
was meaning
But put
one step ahead
of another
And soon
you’re there
at the shrine
with several
in your wake
and many
ahead and
at the ready
for the harder trek
all those
miles in paper
underwear
now a
matter of
public record
at the
Bashō museum
Every place
he stopped
found a circle
that opened out
and found lines
that found
their narrow
path
My God, it sounds
like me
Who else?
Could end a line this way
and breathe
through this line
and make this choice
to make this noise
sometimes with rime,
and end this line,
that resembles
his own voice
A new day, it seems, at New Town Diner
that lies before us like a land of dreams
Though leftover nightmares intervene
Despite the comforting families pictured there
Yesterday the black hats and the white lit up the sky
of a neighborhood that wondered about the end here
no one expecting abject surrender
and every one wanting to know why
Today the correspondent returns to the crime zone
to follow the blood trail of the perpetrator
who was plucked from the belly of the whaler
in the place they had to take him in
But despite the best veggie hash so easy up
Recurring nightmares linger in my cup.
M. A. SCHORR recently moved to Watertown, Massachusetts. His newest book of poems, Aliens, consists of jazz and nature haiku co-authored with Niels Kjær, and will appear in Denmark this summer.