I gaze at the Pacific and don't expect
to ever see the heads on Easter Island,
though I guess at sunlight rippling
the yellow grasses sloping to shore;

yesterday a doe ate grass in the orchard:
it lifted its ears and stopped eating

when it sensed us watching from
a glass hallway-in his sleep, a veteran

sweats, defusing a land mine.
On the globe, I mark the Battle of

the Coral Sea-no one frets at that now.
A poem can never be too dark,

I nod and, staring at the Kenai, hear
ice breaking up along an inlet;

yesterday a coyote trotted across
my headlights and turned his head

but didn't break stride; that's how
I want to live on this planet:

alive to a rabbit at a glass door-
and flower where there is no flower.


About this poem
"One day I unpacked a globe out of a cardboard box and looked at different locations on our planet. When I saw 'Coral Sea,' I stopped and thought of the Battle of the Coral Sea. The poem sprang out of that moment."
-Arthur Sze

About Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze is the author of "Compass Rose" (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Arthur Sze. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate