Verse Editorial
Versesfor the sky
Twelve poems, one for each sign, and twenty-seven lines for the Moon’s lodgings. Original, and meant to be read slowly.
01Twelve signs
Horns
The year has not decided yet.The field is flat, the light is thin,and something small and stubbornsets its forehead to the wind.
No plan. No map. A hoof on frost.The grass will say where it is goingwhen it gets there.
Everyone who ever began anythingbegan like this: a little foolish,already moving.
Afternoon
All morning the bull has not moved,and the morning has not minded.Clover. A fly. The long shoulder of a hill.
He knows the weight of what he owns:the shade, the slow river,the name of every stone in the wall.
Ask him to hurry and he will look at youthe way the hills look at weather.What is it you think is comingthat is better than this?
Two Roads, One Voice
Did you hear that?I heard it first.It sounded like a door.It sounded like a name.Whose name?Yours. Or mine.We could ask.We could ask. Let’s ask.
The road forks here, and both of us take it,talking all the way down.
Tidepool
The sea left this behindthe way a mother leaves a lamp:a small bright room of water,a starfish asleep in its own geometry,the whole moon held in a hand-sized sky.
Nothing here is wide.Everything is kept.
Come back at evening.The tide will have been generous again.
Noon Court
Noon. The lion lies across the stoneand the stone grows warm in his honour.He does not roar. He does not need to.The whole plain arranges itself around himlike iron filings around a magnet.
But watch the young ones in his shade,how they learn what a crown is for:not to be looked at,but to look after.
The sun does not ask whether it is loved.It rises, and the barley answers.
Inventory
One sheaf of wheat, bound at the neck.A needle, threaded in the dark.The list on the kitchen wall in a hand you know,each item crossed out in pencil.
The seed sorted from the chaff.The small repair no one will ever notice.The bridge that holds because someone checked the bolts.
Praise is not the crop here.The crop is bread,and the quiet of a thing made right.
Fair Weather
On one pan, what I wanted.On the other, what I said I would do.On one, the ease of the kind word.On the other, the weight of the true one.
The beam trembles, as beams do.It is not the scale that decides.It is the hand that steadies it,and the patience to let the needle restsomewhere between the two.
Under the Stone
Under the stone the dark is patient.Nothing is said. Everything is noticed.
A promise made heredoes not dissolve.It is kept,or it is a wound.
The scorpion carries no malice.It carries a long memoryand a door it will openonly from the inside.
One Sentence
Somewhere past the last fence postand the last argument about what is practical,the archer draws the string to his ear,not because he sees the target,but because he has finally understoodthat the pull is the point,that the arrow is a letter sent aheadto a place he will reach later on foot,and that the whole long road,the dust, the borrowed bread,the strangers who answered his questionswith better questions,was the answer all along.
Ascent
Not the leap. The step.And then the next one.The mountain has no opinion of you.It has weather, and height,and all the time in the world.So you bring bread, and you bring patience,and you learn each stoneby putting your weight on it.At the top there is no applause,only a wide cold lightand, if you are lucky, someone behind youwho learned the way by following.
The Jar
Someone is always tipping a jar somewhere.The water does not ask whose fields.It runs the way ideas run,downhill, toward whatever is thirsty,carrying a little of the sky with it.
The bearer stands apart on the ridge,not cold, only far enough away to seethe whole green spread of what was given.
Take some. Pass it on.The jar is never emptyas long as it is being poured.
Two Fishes
Everything returns to water.
One fish swims toward the dream,one toward the waking,and the cord between them hums like a held note.
You cannot say where tenderness begins.You can say only that it does not endat the skin, at the shore, at the year.
The tide takes back the names.The names were only ever foam.
Everything returns to water.
02Twenty-seven lodgings
One couplet for each place the Moon rests, in the order it visits them. The names and symbols are traditional. The lines are ours.
- 1AśvinīHoofbeats before the question is finished:
someone is already coming with the cure. - 2BharaṇīWhat is carried must be set down.
The vessel knows, and bears it to the end. - 3KṛttikāA flame is a kind of knife.
It takes away what was never the thing. - 4RohiṇīThe cart creaks home with the whole harvest.
Even the Moon stops here to look. - 5MṛgaśīrāA deer lifts its head at nothing you can hear.
Follow gently. The forest is the question. - 6ĀrdrāThe storm breaks, and the air remembers how to be clean.
Grief was only weather passing through. - 7PunarvasuYou went out as far as you could, and came back
to find the porch light had stayed on. - 8PuṣyaThe cow gives without being asked.
Nothing blooms that was not first fed. - 9ĀśleṣāA coil is a decision to hold.
Whether it shelters or binds, ask the one inside. - 10MaghāSeated, you are still carried
by everyone who stood here first. - 11Pūrva PhalgunīRest is also a craft.
Lay the table, light the lamp, begin the enjoying. - 12Uttara PhalgunīA promise kept at the back of the bed
holds up the whole house. - 13HastāThe hand knows what the mind is still explaining.
Give it clay. - 14CitrāLight, caught and cut, turns itself into design.
Look how a made thing shines. - 15SvātīIt bends because it intends to grow.
The wind is only a teacher. - 16ViśākhāOne gate, built for one arrival.
Walk toward it as if you had already come. - 17AnurādhāThe lotus keeps its roots in mud and its face to the sun.
Friendship does both. - 18JyeṣṭhāThe eldest carries the umbrella for everyone else.
It is not always dry underneath. - 19MūlaDig until the root shows.
It is smaller than the tree, and holds the tree. - 20PūrvāṣāḍhāWater cannot be defeated, only crossed.
Say it plainly and the river listens. - 21UttarāṣāḍhāNot the loud win, the one that lasts.
A principle is a very long staircase. - 22ŚravaṇaLearning begins with a held silence.
The world is always telling you something. - 23DhaniṣṭhāThe drum asks only that you keep time with others.
Wealth is a rhythm shared. - 24ŚatabhiṣāA hundred small cures in an empty circle.
The healer works alone, and is thanked in silence. - 25Pūrva BhādrapadāFire for the old shape, so that something truer can stand.
The fierce ones are often the kindest. - 26Uttara BhādrapadāDeep water does not hurry.
What lies at the bottom is calm, and old, and kind. - 27RevatīThe last mansion is a road home.
Someone has gone ahead and left a lantern.