For days our kitchen blooms with yellow day lilies.
Wine glasses hang for more cold wine.
Outside, all over the city,
Chrysanthemums are starting to open. Above us
Clouds turn dark blue into thunderstorms.
Soon the mailman will come carrying
More rejections once again.
I sometimes wonder if I'll ever
Find what others already see.
What does it matter if everyone
Chatters on about what they've just
Done to keep pain
From drifting back in all over again?
Clothes no longer fit the featherweight
I've slimmed into but the yellow
Daylilies have opened in our village
Soothing what I can't do myself.
I'd like to be here
When there's no more time
To let this ink seep into something
That you might want
As something precious, forever.?
Poetry Reed Diffuser by DeWitt Clinton
$15.00Price
This poem is one of 114 poetic adaptations of Kenneth Rexroth's One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, New Directions, 1971. He is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater where he taught about 30 years in the Department of Languages and Literatures. Now retired, he is teaching Iyengar chair yoga to seniors in the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Public Library System. His recent books are At the End of the War, By a Lake Near a Moon: Fishing with the Chinese Master, Hello There, and just released, When & If.
