Memory of Friends

In Chinese painting, plum, pine and bamboo symbolize the spirits which endure through winter.

Early spring

Light through a narrow window settles on the grey wall opposite

Rapt

 

In moments it's an inky canvas
Wondering, in stillness

Sable washes, darker at the crests, stretch sinuously in space

Emerge from moistened melancholy mists

Of chalky mould

And the passing time

Pine copses are ashen scribbles

The scratches of gnarled trunks

Charcoal fades to bony limestone limbs,

Descending to an ivory vein, the foaming stream beneath

A running tap trickles

Three friends helped me through winter.

Plum, pine and bamboo

Through the valley's dew I search for them,

Those friends I miss, scattered

A brooding mantle weighs in the windless air

Spring's surge may not unseat me

From private moments

And mist-shrouded regret

As time dissolves the porous chalk of memory

No bird's in flight

Sweet mountain scents from laden branches

Friends abroad

Tortured will is traced in pine

Yet fortitude in rustling bamboo

Plums ripen

Winter passed

They helped me realise

Past and future lie prone, enshrouded

In wistful solitude, watching, a new spring is born

I'll remain. 

Reviews

[bobc]

W...very nice effort here. Thanx for posting it...bobc

[Robert Lindsay]

Beautifully descriptive poem. All from a concrete wall. It's the poem of an artist.