Kathleen Hellen
last night I read the late T’ang poet
Last night I read Tu Fu, and drifted in the wild autumn wastes,
on by-paths clustered with chrysanthemum. The birds, returning, familiar.
The fish in the brook, not strange. I followed fern and wood, collecting
images of pinecones to put in my mind’s pocket, splitting the hive to lick
the cold honey. Life on course and homeward, this evening in Ch’u, so like
this evening in my neighborhood. I sense the trend, easy to imagine. I am on
the autumn road to rituals of memory. The yew with scarlet berries. The roses
puckered, pale. A flaming rug of leaves around the oak. I follow in the syllables,
lift my head to find a river of stars drowned in the glow of streetlights. A thousand
houses in the haze, filled with strangers. The faint perfume of woodsmoke.
Kathleen Hellen’s honors include prizes from H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review, and her prize-winning collection Umberto’s Night is published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Hellen’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, jubilat, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, and West Branch, among others. Her credits include two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Hellen’s latest poetry collection is The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin.
