Of Meditation and Redemption—Two Poems
By Shaun Griffin
Floating the Yangtze Shallows, Still as Rice—
one oar tipping the water to shore,
and Wang Wei lays a reed across the bow,
like the heron, quiet overhead.
No thing can stop such flight—the poet
in his boat—a single tremor
on the water. This is how the smoke
of battle drifts from view, how the bird hooks what
cannot be seen, how each green shoot
waves in the wet earth without worry,
the tattered world slipping by.
Now That You Can Fly
for Izzy
All day you touched the thorn of disbelief—out now,
you flew to surprise a friend for her eightieth.
These things you pushed below to live without feeling
for the twenty-nine you were inside. When she
came through the door and saw your face
it was a gift of collapsed time—
the telescope
of three decades released to her arms.
A miracle of flight brought you to the high desert
of this women who read
the mercy of your eyes.
When you left for the airport, the cleave of detention
faded from your face. Now the two of you
return to this clear, December day. Now you rise
in your respective deserts and the cold will not kiss
this reunion in the dust of incarceration.
Note: Now That You Can Fly was written for Ismael “Izzy” Santillanes, and you are welcome to read Izzy’s 2019 Double Down Blog post, I BLAME SHAUN.
Shaun T. Griffin is a poet and artist who also serves as Board Chair of the Nevada Humanities Board of Trustees. He co-founded and directed Community Chest, a rural social justice agency, for 27 years. Because the Light Will Not Forgive Me—Essays from a Poet was released by the University of Nevada Press in 2019. His new book of poems, No Charity in the Wilderness, is forthcoming from the University of Nevada Press in 2024, and River Ask Me Why, a memoir, is coming out from Southern Utah University Press in 2024.
Photo courtesy of Shaun T. Griffin.