Poetry / September 2012 (Issue 18)


A Scholar Instructs a Goose

by Richard K. Kent


 
 
On an anonymous Chinese photograph, ca. 1930s

At the garden's end, the long-robed scholar,
fingers raised, is forever instructing the goose,

which looks back with willful, beady eye.
The old man knows it's useless but still he goes

on trying. How else? For all these years
the two of them paired like this.
 
Website © Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 2007-2018
ISSN 1999-5032
All poems, stories and other contributions copyright to their respective authors unless otherwise noted.