5 April 2026

By Philip Kuepper

A river is wine flowing
in a mystic’s mind.
The grass on the banks I lie in is laughed
by the wind that is a wine song off the river,
and up through the pines.

I am hungry.
I don’t wait for the poet.
I crunch the crisp
wrapping of eggroll
I have dipped into a cup
of orange sauce.
It dribbles down my chin.
The wine I sip is the shade of the sun.
It speaks on my tongue,
Mystic-speak,
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,
a 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
the poet has drunk wine, exchanged wisdom.
He has been in no hurry.
He has taken time,
and not been taken by time.

But the poet has come.
I pour him wine.
We eat in silence.
We eat the silence.
A boat passes, soundlessly, along the river.
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 his dream 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 poet’s eye
in which the spirit fish has been caught looking.
The poet handed me this,
just before he turned away,
and dove into the moon reflected in the river.

(3 February; updated 7 April 2026)