Matthew Thorburn: Two Poems from “A Green River in Spring”

First Light

.
The sun breaks like an egg over everything

east of here. Stop stop, enough enough,

the sparrows say—or that’s what Lao Wen says

.

they say in Chinese. Take your tarnished

horn, your wooden flute and break

this silence—alone beside the dark water, desperate

.
for the birds to get to work—delicate

as the last skin of ice on a winter river’s wrist.

.

Birds Before Winter

.
Dabbing lather across my chin, I picture you: bent low

over the tap, drinking from your cupped hands.

.
You probably aren’t even up yet. Hair a tangle

on the covers, eyelids made pale by the sun.

.
Sweeping the back step I find a cricket,

wings laced with frost. The leaves keep falling.

.
I look for you in all the things that are not you.

The plate of milk, left by the cat, sours.

.
You must be filling the red tea pot

with water now, measuring green tea.

.
The birds wing their way south. They take

the sky with them, each black scrap.

—

A Green River in Spring by Matthew Thorburn is the winner of the 2014 Coal Hill Review Chapbook Prize. To purchase the chapbook, please visit the Autumn House Press catalog.

— Shan Shui Landscape Painting