5 April 2026

By Philip Kuepper

Wine, pines, the river
at Mystic,
the grass I lie in laughs.
Wind is a wine song
through the pines
as I crunch into the crisp
wrapping of eggroll.
I dip it into a cup
of orange sauce.
It slobbers down my chin.
The wine is the shade of the sun.
It speaks on my tongue,
Mystic-speak, conversing
between flesh and spirit.
The poet appears out of nowhere.
He has come a long way from the early
eighth century. It has taken
time. The path has been
arduous.
There have been mountains.
There have been rivers,
violet rivers, moon-pierced,
moon, the shape of a fish hook
cast in the water to fish
the spirit fish. There have been haunts
inhabited by hermits with whom
wine was drunk, wisdom exchanged.
But the poet has come.
I pour him wine. We eat
in silence. We eat the silence.
A boat passes, soundlessly.
Soundlessly oars speak
the language of the river. The poet,
after his journey, after his wine,
sleeps. He wakes.
He hands me his dream
he has fished, by the moon, from his sleep.
I lay it on the grass next me.
It flips its tale. It is alive with images.
The image that arrests my eye
is the one of the eye of the poet
in which the spirit fish has been caught looking.
The poet has handed me this,
just before he turned away,
and drowned in the moon.

(3 February 2026)