Three Poems
Norman Schaefer
Moonlight and Plum Blossoms
Moonlight and plum blossoms enter my spring poems.
I plant trees in the sun, trim the roses at dusk.
Inside the house a television gathers dust.
Long ago we moved the bed to face the mountains.
Constance
In the redolent dusk I gaze out the window at Mt. Constance.
Piercing the heavens, it grows taller in the moonlight.
It is the highest peak, the monarch, of the eastern front range.
Whenever I’m away from home, I leave the garden in its care.
Kyogen
One day the monk Kyogen was weeding and sweeping the ground.
A pebble brushed away struck a bamboo, making a sound that awakened him.
Kyogen’s joy was boundless; it can happen anytime.
We should be like the bobcat who is always ready.
Norman Schaefer was born in Olympia, Washington in 1947 and studied art history at the University of California at Davis, graduating in 1983. He did not begin writing until his forties—his books of poetry, which include The Sunny Top of California, Fool’s Gold, Lower Putah Song, and Records of a Broken-down Mountaineer, came out in the years that followed. In 2004, finding that Davis had grown too big and noisy, Schaefer moved to Port Townsend, Washington, where he now lives with his wife, surrounded by maples, birches, lilacs, and plums.
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