Doug Stone

Li Bai on His Way to Meng Haoran’s Grave

The anger of a gathering storm
stirs the sullen sky with dark
clouds fringed with first rain.
The boatman will be impatient
to get ahead of the bad weather.

But I will pay him well to take
this journey slow. I am in no
hurry to stand beside your grave.
I’ll ride the river’s rough currents
and add my voice to the howling wind.

I want to embrace the rage of nature
that knows how much I’ve lost.
After I allow myself to say goodbye,
I’ll walk away from your grave
into the waiting arms of sorrow.

Northwest’s Mind of Winter

December shoulders into our lives
dragging with it, November’s dark rain
to help ignite the Northwest’s mind of winter.
As our thoughts turn to the holidays, rain
raps on our windows whispering, “I am here.”
Leafless trees mourn summer’s memory, their
voices all rattle and clash, but December’s song
is already in firs fattened with wind and rain,
their verdant voices, a choir praising the months
of dark skies coming. They sing a rich, green
celebration of a season shimmering in a glaze
of incessant rain that shakes the earth awake
and begins to quench her thirst for winter.

Doug Stone lives in Albany, Oregon. He has written two chapbooks, The Season of Distress and Clarity (Finishing Line), The Moon’s Soul Shimmering on the Water (KDP), and a full length poetry collection, Sitting in Powell’s Watching Burnside Dissolve in Rain (The Poetry Box). His poems have been published in numerous journals and in the anthology, A Ritual To Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford.