Quintanka 20: One Dream Leads to Another Poem

Fathoming the Surface of the River

I find myself lamenting
the past, its charming disenchantments,
instead of apprehending
nothing matters now except
this mist emerging from a fog.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 19: Taking Things Personally Poem

Seeing Red (The Phantom of the Heart)

He doesn’t ask for aspirin
but drops his headache in my head
moving the wraith be mine
because it simply isn’t his.
He’s right—my wrath has kept it fed.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 18: It's After Independence Day Poem

Spirit: Morning After the Fourth: Chain Bridge

In summer months no eagles
gather except the one enshrined
within the topmost branches
winging in that evergreen—
a lesser vision goes unseen.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 17: Zen Pro Creation Daughter Poem

Life is the Only Truth

I see between the great
blue sky and grand blue river stands
a single strand of green
alive—I understand my daughter
is my only realization.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 16: An Anti-Nike Poem

Just Dream It: Sunday Sundae

Imagine sun and ice
cream, blue sky, hot fudge, cumulus
whipped cream, raspberry breezes,
summer melting slowly towards
July inside the cup of mind.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 15: First Juicy July Jamming Poem

Returning to the Country of My Childhood

If only I could savor
dreaming now as living then,
gathering red raspberries
growing wild beside the idle
dirt road that trailed along the lake.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 14: The Last June Poem of 2007

On Writing a Poem on the Last Day of June

This morning, with the summer
sun so high abundant leaves
in maple trees create
cool shadows all around, an evening
thought has settled in my writing.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 13: Kokoro Sonzai's Endless Jikaawase

The Dead Poets Utaawase

Duality divides
the world in binary illusion:
first, the summer is
and everything is grow, grow, grow—
then seconds, summer isn’t. So…

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 12: Poetic Treatise on Faith

On Seeing the Season’s First Mowing

This summer is a thing
I’ve willed from nothing into being.
Green! I chant again.
And sun! I hold it in my sway.
But something wilder is making hay.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 11: Sunapee Poem

Meditating on Lake Sunapee

The wind is blowing soundly
while traveling the length of lake
for distances that seem
forever. Where does water end
and air begin with waves like this?

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 10: Long Form for the Summer Solstice

After the Solstice on the Mouth of the Merrimack

The first full day of summer and
the tide is high. Sailboats are plentiful.
The sun is dwelling both in river
and sky. The current, heightening, is flowing
towards that vast abundance, out to sea.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 9: Kind of Honkadori Poem

Walt Whitman Presently at Joppa Flats

A skiff is settled in
the shore grass. Lowest tide is now;
the river is withdrawn
two hundred yards away. When is
a boat a boat, the green grass asks.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 8: Cardinal Point

The Cosmos of the Bird Feeder

If every object is
interpretation of attention
to locality
within the universal void,
this cardinal is a red planetoid.

~Kokoro Sonzai; translation by Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 7: The Smokescreen of the Vanities

The Vanity of Our Architecture

The city skyline seems
so serious it’s difficult
believing haze can hide
its angular exteriors
in what’s in essence insubstantial.

~Son Rivers (aka Kokoro Sonzai) 2007

Quintanka 6: Commuting Poem Work

Commuting is Just a Point of View

I see a lobster boat
heading to sea and off to work.
I see the infinite
its workplace and the sun its clerk,
the bow its boss, the world its perk.

~Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 5: Summer Dreaming Poem

On Seeing Again Sailboats

As if our sailing psyches
surfaced from deep subconscious seas
to breathe the dream and stay
afloat with will and wakefulness—
else sink again towards sleep to freeze.

~Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 4: Cormac McCarthy Meets Hitomaro

Rendering Caesar

The fog of war appears
come first light in its foggy guise
obscuring all with fog,
fogging the lay of land with lies—
until that greater power’s rise.

~Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 3: See the Cedar Poem

The Tale of Two Cedars

A long-dead cedar tree
still stands above a torn and almost
uprooted trunk another
cedar left behind, its branches
still green against a greener ground.

~Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 2: Shunzei was Here

Stopping by a Pond on a Rainy Afternoon

It dawns on me while gazing
through this windshield streaked with rain
that it’s a miracle
we see the greater world at all—
the pond is shrouded by low mists.

~Son Rivers 2007

Quintanka 1: Saigyo Was Here

Effervescent Evanescence

June and everywhere
its greenery is overwhelming
visions of the earth
as if some deep reality
itself were heating to a bubble.

~Son Rivers 2007