"The Pillow Book" (Happy Poem #4)

"The Pillow Book" (Happy Poem #4)

Reading Sei Shonagon’s lists of things, even her list of "hateful
things,"
even her list of "things that give an icky feeling"
even her list of "things that I made up":

it’s not the lists themselves, though item after item shine.
It’s not "a mantis broken in the sash."
It’s not "the crack in one’s Chinese mirror from Cho-fu-sa";

rather, it is that feel of a mind so arranging itself that images,
like tools*"the brush, the silver tweezer, the cherry-pruning saw"
should slip just so into appointed places

as though all the untowardness of a normal life
were tallied up at one’s pillow and not
not quite, not always found wanting

Jeremy M. Downes
Auburn, AL
USA
UNICEF and American Red Cross.