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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover collage by JanK
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The Wetland
I.
I look into the sun
shining between the naked
branches of the wetland
because life is too short
not to stop for a second
and let the mind go
click-click-click,
capture the quiet between
the bird conversations
beyond the mossy waters.
Life is too short
for people whose vision
is limited to their eyes,
blind to the obvious,
clinging to the theory,
the tyranny of the extrovert,
that the loudest is
always right, when
the silence between the birds
says they are wrong.
II.
The wetland didn’t drain
this year. The pond froze
over and trapped last year’s
grass beneath like a museum
exhibit, unmoving, unwavering,
noiseless. But now
it’s spring and the rot begins,
the moss creeps over the surface
and the illusion of winter,
the delusion of solid footing
melts and I sink
below the reeds.
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III.
the wetland rises
and falls with
the fortunes of the rain
the black muck
on golden reeds,
year-old dipsticks
of the water's progress
I can see from
my chair over
my morning coffee.
every season’s chaos approaches
to swallow us whole.
IV.
Last year, a raccoon,
probably diseased, staggered
into the wetland and was
never seen again. They are
an increasingly rare sight.
This morning, I watched three
handsome mallards swim
in a determined row across
the vernal pond. All spring
I wondered if they will
nest here.
But lurking
somewhere in the trees
is a fox. I know.
I have seen him
and asked "Why do foxes
always run from
left to right in front
of me?" The mystery
of their eternal direction,
though, is a sign
that the world keeps moving
ever around, ever changing
its intention, its direction,
its tension--such is life.
Daryl Muranaka © 2020
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Click above title to download PDF microchap
Cover collage by JanK
*
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I.
The troubled orbit
around Bruce Lee begins
with the notion that I
do what he did
only slower,
begins
with the motion of being
pulled by the gravity
of him, by the blood
pumping and pure,
not found on magazine covers.
But it is not true, and I
am me as we are he.
II.
I’ve settled into my
troubled orbit around Bruce Lee,
years in the making.
It is uncomfortably comfortable,
not settled, not settling
for the oh-so-expected
because he didn’t settle
when he had less until he had more.
How I started with more
and find my life
forced to settle for less
than what my wife deserves.
III.
I live in the troubled
orbit around Bruce Lee.
The waning and waxing of favor,
spinning the seasons
because I am the proof
that the false
stereotypes are true
born lies, and my life
is just the whisper
to the stars.
I stay a troubled course
around and around
slower—no—faster—no—slower
around this troubled star,
round and round.
Just a half inch
& 10 pounds
from hotness
and the other
near misses of life.
I spin and dance
in a universe that tells me
it doesn’t care.
I don’t matter—
me and my kind.
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IV.
I’m trapped in my troubled
orbit around Bruce Lee
that faded star in the distance
from which I can never pull free,
from an image, an ideal so far away
in mass, in luminescence
that I am my own shadow.
What makes a man?
The taut feline motion?
The explosion of power?
My own muscles work
against me even as my own heart
betrays me, my desire
to have the power
flow from my hands
to have the whole world see
this could be my own image of me.
This is no work for infants.
V.
I travel my troubled orbit
around Bruce Lee
seeing all the glory &
pride, the angry flares
I can feel at the edges
of my atmosphere,
the truth of the stars
keeping the secret of the stoic,
swollen and burning,
pure and angry,
a sacrifice made by fire
to no one and nowhere.
*
Daryl Muranaka © 2018
Nominated for Pushcart Prize
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