Japanese Poems
Between the bent boughs
of the splayed sumac the silver
owl rests his head.
The perimeter
left by your absence is long
to walk in one day.
The angel in her
credenza of extreme beauty
dogs swim the river
I look for my heart
by the lamp where the light is
skitter in the wet black leaves
Copyright Credit: "Japanese Poems" from Orbit: Poems by Cynthia Zarin, compilation copyright © 2017 by Cynthia Zarin. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Source: Orbit (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017)