AFTER MY BROTHER’S “THOUGHTS OF LONG AGO AT FROG-RIVER POND”

A person’s life lived out somewhere: do you know what it’s like?

It’s like a wild goose flying free that lands in mud-crust snow,

its web-toed feet leaving a chance print there in the mudpack,

and then sets out again, soaring east or west, who knows where.

Our old monk friend is dead now, the grave’s shrine-tower built,

and the monastery wall’s in ruins, those poems we wrote there

gone. Remember how we came here back then, mountain roads

precarious and long, people desperate, that lame mule yowling?