Poem of the Day
1981
By Asiya Wadud
in a world the orange sun resets
in a world the orange sun resets
If a man walks with one hand on the baby carriage
As he argues with the mother but picks blossoms
From the park trees to fold into the carriage
First we lose our shadows
walking together into the veiled fields
of shade tobacco.
At first sight muffled silence
at first sight the immanence of night
at first sight colors advance
When I go to the bathroom I see a beetle in the tub,
black, with a band of stone color
around the center, granite with a trace of
Not that his writing isn’t moving when
it doesn’t seem it should be,
owing in part, at least, to the cloud of difficulty
Remembering that war, I’d near believe
We didn’t need the enemy, with whom
Our dark encounters were confused and few
The knots tied by a river
become lost ends as the tangles
and meanders separate, cut off
on which the lunar spring descends‚
blanching every shard with halo splendor,
chips of broken cones, sheen
Beneath a sky whose hardened violets
still chase a warm front’s temperatures along,
the mockingbird and mourning dove create
I’m tired of lying here.
The mountain and the river are not bad.
Sometimes a bear, a boar, or a deer