Dogwood

Whose flowers
      seem to float
            along its limbs,
                  as a mobile

placed in the air,
      as delicate as the word
                  for slenderness,
                        hosomi, in Japanese.

Whose petals
      bear the imprint
            of the red-rimmed kiss
            of the princess

of blossoming trees.
      Whose suchness
            evokes the exclamation,
                  Ah.

Whose blown blossoms
      become a small rain,
            conjuring Lao Tzu,
                  who lectured

beneath it about
      Tao, and suggested
            the middle path
                  can be found

in the calligraphy
      of dogwood petals
            as they write themselves
                  on a page of the wind.

— WALLY SWIST

Wally Swist’s new book, “Luminous Dream,” was chosen as a finalist in the 2010 FutureCycle Poetry Book Award. His scholarly monograph, The Friendship of Two New England Poets, Robert Frost and Robert Francis, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. A recording of a poem from his reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, accompanied by jazz cellist Eugene Friesen, a member of Paul Winter Consort, is archived at npr.org.