Cameo with Miniature Landscape
I want you to know that your stories
are not less beautiful now
because I have ceased to believe them.
Rather, they unfold
like Chinese stories on scrolls,
a leisurely entertainment for those mornings
when I am too weak to fall from my bed.
I unwind
another inch or two
of parchment,
muse on the significance
of this or that ideogram,
and with a little effort I am able
to see through the bay window
persimmons dropping in the near garden.
Skaters on the more distant pond
glide in rapt silence.
(published in Hanging Loose Press, #69, 1996)