Dead Calm

Calm in the garden after the night’s wild storm.
Hail’s needle has pierced the flowers, their tender verdure,
embroidering them with death in the darkness;
             now all is blind silence.
One long, stiff leaf remains taut and intact,
a narrow green mirror,
a canoe full of water where the sun king shines—hypocrite?
I am a bone-dry grain of rice
observing this sliver of sky.

If that leaf-sword full of life, now nest of light,
twisted into a sickle, affirming Death with a question mark,
             it would claim my blood.

Despite the storm this rigid, erect sword-leaf remains intact,
a narrow, calm, sunny lake;
beholding it,
             I’m nothing but a grain of rice—no neck, no heart—
                          impervious to death.