Читать книгу Washita - Patrick Lane T. - Страница 18

DRINKING STONE

The wooden ladle is thin, worn away by stone.

I cup my hands in the basin, lift water to my mouth.

The high creeks find their way to quiet waters.

I was at home on the gravel bars until poetry drew me away to the city.

I fished the high lakes with my brother, dead now these many years.

An old man found the ladle in the back of his shop in Fan Tan Alley.

A wooden spoon carved in a village northwest of far Xian.

Strange, the sudden memory of a spoon I carved as a boy.

A child of the bush, I wanted to be alive in a simpler time.

It is foolish of me now to look at my hands and remember

how difficult it was to carve the ladle’s bowl with a knife blade.

I think of that spoon now, the wind drying my hands.

How far away a poem can take you from the world.

The quail bring their young to the stone basin at dawn.

One and by one they lift their heads, cool water running down their throats.