"Circling Low and Inside Tonight"

She wouldn't like a poem like this.

She wasn't much for poetry,

Except, perhaps, for gospel hymns,

And I don't write hymns anymore,



Or not the sort that take us home

To Jesus, more the sort that drag

Me out along the Great Divide

Where pilgrim bluegrass singers pour



Their extravagant narratives

Of whiskey, blood, and hallelujahs

Over violins and banjos,

And farther up the pine-clogged slopes,



Old, jaded Chinese poets hide,

As impossibly taciturn

As the balladeers down below

Are emotively loquacious,



Writing to write beyond language,

Drinking and sighing in their beards,

One eye watching clouds for dragons,

The other squinting at three words'



Wavering black calligraphy.