Three Crows on a Pine Bough upon Buson’s ink-brush painting

by GTimothy Gordon

Late fall parched mustard wheat
modest as a Norse king, no risqué
bluebell, poppy, scarlet paintbrush,
or even outré desert aspen, bronze turning
among mangroves of sand speckling this end
of earth, not Kyoto, in fall, the blackest of ravens,
goblins, trolling from husks of stumps bone-dry things,
all for the scent of blossom, sight of bloom,                 
every prickly Joshua beseeching heaven.