Status Updates From Azaleas: A Book of Poems (W...

Sound of mountain winds,
sound of cold rains falling.
On a night you talk of life’s changes,
the fire at the country tavern dies down, a cricket cries.

Lived or died says the same,
since living, a person grows older and dies.
But if this is so true of life, why should I feel it so
again today, at the very top of the mountain
I climbed to stand, weeping?

Even the swallow flying back and forth through the skies
has its strong, familiar nest to come back to,
while I cannot but be sad, creature without a home.

Mine to all at once
leave the house,
scramble up the mountain
and be there looking down on the sea.
The boat is out, sailing the sky’s edge.

Though the sun is sinking at the mountain crest,
it seems to be growing dark because of you.
Though the sun itself rises over the mountain ridge,
it seems that morning turns bright because of you.
Earth may collapse or the sky fall in,
but until the end, all that is, is because of you.
This is my only thought, that if the time should ever come,
like a shadow I will be with you.
Oh you, who once were my love!

"That face, mine, in the mirror, facing me,
had I only known it better sooner than now."

I look everywhere,
but only the traceless song settles over,
while here, and there on the shadowy hill
the voice of someone who seems to be calling me,
the voice calling, the calling voice
trying to seize my soul and tear it out of me.

"To live well or not is not the point,
just to be alive, not dead,
even about not being unable to die;
but this year with a son at fourteen, and daughter, both,
Sunbok’s dad can’t just end it, can he?"

"Moonlight weeping each night over the leaves.."