Facing East on Basho Pond

By on Jul 10, 2017 in Poetry

Lily pond

Every day, I trod the imperial Basho
Pond, feet placed neatly in footsteps
by the latent water. Staccato tongue
cuddled the acrolect of frogs and mist,
pugnacious through ice-capped moss.
Saffron robe cast up night’s cutlass
blades like refuge drawing lava from
crater floor, sparing my quiescence its
silhouette against these rustic plains
of forethought. At the chirps of robin’s
nest, up the Tea House Hermitage, a
life of incense strong-winged over bead-
drops of dew, distilled into innards of
cicada-hued wood beams, more arcane
than any frankincense tracing veins of
dead ghosts. I had remembered then,
briefly, to a Kafkaesque carapace down
the heart of maelstrom, where I moved
rough and crackled, dark gleam in what
was otherwise flame, razor-creased as
a slip of girl, egregious in my sail beyond
all the evidences of me, slow-fomenting
like dry wings puddling on Basho shore.

About

A Pushcart nominee, Lana Bella is an author of two chapbooks, Under My Dark</i? (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016) and Adagio (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming); has had poetry and fiction featured with over 300 journals, 2River, California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Columbia Journal, Poetry Salzburg Review, San Pedro River Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, The Ilanot Review, The Writing Disorder, Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, Yes Poetry and elsewhere. She resides in the U.S. and in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps. Her author page can be found on Facebook.