So Lost --- poem by Koon Woon

So Lost

 

When the fox trots in the snow,

the days of it, whiteness, blankness, so lost in it…

As I am also in the labyrinth of your hair, the contours of your body,

so lost am I that my ancestors had no names, were unknowable,

like fractals, like sugar, sometimes in it, and sometimes within it,

and days, and weeks of it, the snow, the forgetfulness…

 

The weather of our lives, what is disguised in it.

The form of the fox, at his nose tip a snowflake,

With the wind whipping the snowflakes around him and he is so lost!

So lost I am in the realm of your voice,

your pleased smile, the love. It’s a gift, the necessary gift like a dowry.

And so, when the fox comes to the edge of a village,

to see smoke and steam rise from the chimneys the houses come alive,

he then knows no childhood shame, nor any shame,

and so, he dreams of warm rough bread and hot ale,

that through the years a fox could do worse,

and a man, the infinitely sad creature, if not this,

all this which he has done, which now seems to have been necessary,

and to forsake this, he could do worse, a lot worse

than to be lost, so lost in it, the blankness of the page,

that somehow the aroma of bread can rise from it…

 

 

 

Koon Woon,

Circa 2004