STEPS
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/379/1/STEPS/Page1.html
Kevin Dobbs
Kevin Dobbs returned to the USA
recently after 18 years in Asia. He’s Dean of Language Arts and Fine
Arts at Yuba College in Northern California and has placed poems,
fiction, and essays in many journals and anthologies including Chelsea,
Raritan: a Quarterly Review, The New York Quarterly, Carolina
Quarterly, Florida Review, Sou’wester, Soundings East, Poet Lore,
Mid-American Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Karamu, Gulf Stream, Writer’s Forum, and New Delta Review. By Kevin Dobbs
Published on 11/14/2006
A wall of bamboo forest
where the trail head was
still leads to a cluster of stone
tombs the size of dog houses
next to cherry name markers
sunk long before the big war
and, so bright light
where the trail head was
still leads to a cluster of stone
tombs the size of dog houses
next to cherry name markers
sunk long before the big war
and, so bright light
A wall of bamboo forest
where the trail head was
still leads to a cluster of stone
tombs the size of dog houses
next to cherry name markers
sunk long before the big war
and, so bright light
does not startle the dead, in
near-perfect shade.
The names are faded, wood
rotted, green bamboo
rising up
in different angles
through the floors, lifting
ash and bone flakes.
Nobody to hack bamboo, to
paint fresh kanji.
No children asking
why am I alive?
Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2006. All Rights Reserved.
where the trail head was
still leads to a cluster of stone
tombs the size of dog houses
next to cherry name markers
sunk long before the big war
and, so bright light
does not startle the dead, in
near-perfect shade.
The names are faded, wood
rotted, green bamboo
rising up
in different angles
through the floors, lifting
ash and bone flakes.
Nobody to hack bamboo, to
paint fresh kanji.
No children asking
why am I alive?
Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2006. All Rights Reserved.