Scott Wiggerman Verse-Virtual 2016 September

September 2016

I retired to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2015 with my husband, the writer David Meischen, after spending three decades in Austin, Texas, as a school librarian and a member of Austin’s poetry scene. We also moved Dos Gatos Press with us to New Mexico, where we have discovered an equally thriving scene of writers and artists. I continue to explore forms in poetry, lately haiku, ghazals, and sonnets. My most recent book is a collection of sonnets, Leaf and Beak, based on observations from the hour-long walks I take most days. In many ways, “Feng Shui” represents my ars poetica, the thrill and miracle of creation that I am honored to participate in on a daily basis. http://swig.tripod.com

Feng Shui

You see the words
when they’ve been ordered,
arranged like rocks
in a tidy Zen garden.

I see the words
as they casually fall,
shaken from my head
like elm leaves.

Some cascade for hours,
Chinese acrobats
that toss in the air,
tumble through streets,

trail off into the unknown.
You never see the jumble,
the windswept disarray,
the random heaps of flora.

Yet once or twice in a lifetime,
the perfect leaves fall free,
plummet to the page
in just the right spot

with just the right blush,
as though ordained by God
or delivered by genius,
the million to one chance

that miraculously
beats the odds,
becomes the ch’i
of heaven and earth.

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