Soul Shelter

Poseidon throws his shells away
to litter all the shore
where abandoned dwellings
lie vacant…hinged,
their  animating principle
dissolved to a different realm
where curved blue turbulence
dissipates on sand.

Bonnie Marshall

Photo: Bob Wall

in touch

in touch

in Japan, a villager
rests on tatami mats
while sipping tea…
a light and grassy taste…
gazes at a bamboo…pine tree garden
laced white with blossomed plum
azalea…and wisteria…
he breathes in musty damp
of clay lined lily ponds
where circling koi flash golden…
and spreading moss and pebbled paths
draw his thought to insight

In China, a flutist
on a stone arched bridge
plays his silver flute
threading lines of melody
into a mist of evening…
while listeners pause their errands
and cease speaking
to hear compelling sound

In Gansu, awed visitors
circle round and round
a bronze green flying horse
treading on a swallow’s back…
it seems…the swallow is alarmed
to feel the glancing touch of hoof
while the horse gasps with the sense
of flight on top of flight

In Kao-Lin, a ceramist
at a potter’s spinning wheel
inhales the dense and earthy smell
of soft white Kao-Lin clay…
eyes closed, he uses fingers…mind
with just experience of touch
to live life’s supreme sense arbiter
against oblivion

Bonnie Marshall

Han Dynasty…”The Flying Horse of Gansu”

if a fish coughs

just now someone said…fish cough
…instant merriment…
I imagine sardines in schools
of swirling murmurations…
mere flicks of gaiety in sunshine dappled sea…
then…an attack of fish cough
where tiny spasm hiccups and tumble sparkled flips
explode the blue with fishworks
of jostle bump…of upside down and backwards
daring gravity

now…if someone said this to me in church
say…a wedding…worse a funeral…and then cough…
I’d be lost…a shoulder shaking…gasping agony
that most would mistake for crying,
yet I’ve been known to take
whole lofts and chancels with me
…in instant merriment…

Bonnie Marshall

Photo: Henry Jager

choir breathing

I taste complex voices…in a choir
sopranos…are Pippin apples…kiwis…and champagne
altos… damson plums…bing cherries…Pinot noir
tenors… are clover honey…hard cider…butterscotch
and basses…dark cacao…English walnuts… and bock beer

yet I hear a simple heartbeat…in a choir
when directors shape voices with their hands
to breathe in…all pulses quicken
to breathe out…all pulses slow
to find a breathing synchrony
approximate to one

Bonnie Marshall
Intriguing fact…choir singers tend to synchronize their heartbeats,
especially when they chant.

Artist: Vittorio Losito