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ONE MAN’S MYTHOLOGY
One man puts out an empty bucket to catch the rain believing there’s a crack in the floor of heaven and he want the finest water for making tea.
One man gathers mud by the handful believing he was molded of clay and he too wants the finest for patching his walls.
One man opens his door to the bright blue dawn, and smiles, and thinks: this is heaven enough! bet he keeps his bucket handy anyway, and his immense hands are two of his finest companions.
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) Haiku poet, author of three books and three chapbooks, student of Kaballah, publisher |
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Communion
we are dumb before the Spirit
our knees wobble at the sight of a wren
we know nothing but the joy of this tiny backyard filled with birds at dusk
a rabbit and squirrel and chipmunk
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)
Mankh |
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3 Birds on a Tree Chinese Calligraphy Pictograph by Mankh |
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(Tree with branches and roots) |
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must be good friends three sparrows gathering on a lilac branch
Mankh |
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HOW TO LISTEN TO A POET
You might follow every word the way you’d hear the play-by-play of your kid’s baseball game. or notice every nuance of hair and freckle along the back of the neck of a lover.
But more likely you will drift, catching a phrase here, image there, or some word you’ve never heard before like mythopoeic the making of poetic myths or stories.
I suggest you tilt your head occasionally and look away, glance at the wall or the manner in which your shoes cover your feet, so as to hear only the voice.
Because that is often all the poet hears, a voice, from an invisible place, perhaps inside the heart, or head, or somehow floating about the room,
or a series of images that move like the flipping through photos in an album of someone who has taken a trip
and come back to share it with you, the way the landscape flickers when you look out the train window
and some dark skinned horse in the distance flicks her tail and keeps on eating the grass
or how writing a poem is like catching a fish you then let free into the river.
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) |
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AUTUMN ROUNDS — for Yolanda —
To balance this chill October sunrise and all the new found spaces where once some leaves were found, between my hands of morning prayer a cup of coffee stands my ground,
and recognizing familiar sounds my neck turns skyward— to five geese, flying east— familiar autumn rounds.
Five geese flying east to lands of new beginnings, as suredly your journey trails, blessed with solid underpinnings.
Around this globe migrations spread and yours you site for spring, from watered island of your roots— inland, for the solid footholds earth can sing.
The geese are known for swooping down if any of their clan are hurt, for flying’s not an ego-thing—- not one (god-willing) should be left to dirt.
At least that’s how the geese proceed on familiar autumn rounds, and when it’s time for you to fly, don’t stop for me— I’m happy here on the ground, and sometimes flyin’ round.
The geese are known for swooping down if any of their clan are hurt, and that seems the way you fly around this sweet ol’, big ol’ earthen dirt.
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) |
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Performance Poets Association® |