A Road through Ohio Spring

By Royal Rhodes

---

          after Basho

conifers nearby
make me look up from my book
lost in translation

I wanted to write
to find love with life again
here were better words

now cherry blossoms
that like snow cover Spring boughs
show impermanence

layered breaths of clouds
moved by the arc of a fan
become narratives

I know I am watched
by eyes in a peacock's tail
that blink when I move
​
the ink that darkens
outlines how my emptiness
cannot be contained

all that passes here
as theatrical backdrop
shows and stops my world

our isolation
helps nature imagine us
in our long absence

nature was foreign
until I swallowed its soul
my mistakes teach me

---

Royal Rhodes taught religious studies for almost 40 years. His poems have appeared in various journals, including Ekstasis, Ekphrastic Review, The Seventh Quarry, and The Montreal Review, among others. His poetry and art collaborations have been published with The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina.