"20 Things Ancient Chinese Poets Taught Me" by Leath Tonino

1. A good staff is handy in the mountains, as is a bottle of wine, as is the rising moon.

2. Dangling a fishhook off a flat rock in the middle of a river for all eternity may or may not be possible but it’s worth a try.

3. It’s better to be addicted to moss than wealth, sex, or fame.

4. Few joys rival walking an old path in new weather.

5. A cloud can eat ten thousand pines, an entire valley, the sky, and your name.

6. A cloud can also be worn as a jacket.

7. Even when clouds are metaphors they remain clouds.

8. Ditto for ringing bells.

9. Trust ferns.

10. On a calm lake at night one can row a small wooden boat across the stars.

11. Watching plum blossoms come and go makes people very happy but also very sad.

12. Ditto for cherry blossoms.

13. Ditto for peach blossoms.

14. When feeling homesick while traveling pay attention to the local birds because they carry a piece of the land you miss in their mouths as a song.

15. Winter is a mood as well as a season.

16. There are places worth visiting that can only be reached by sitting silently in an empty room.

17. A paw print in the mud is enough.

18. A red leaf curled at the edges is more than enough.

19. A book of poems and a pot of tea are almost too much to handle.

20. A ringing bell is a ringing bell.

From Orion Magazine

"Mandarin Ducks and Snow-Covered Reeds" by Paula Bohince

"Mandarin Ducks in Snow" Woodblock Print, Ohara Koson, 1935

When one dives, separate from her mate,

death is mere illusion.

She peers through water, assuring this.

When the crippled reeds rehabilitate, begin

their constant arc toward spring,

pain seems impossible. So distance. So change-

of-heart. From above or beneath, how

a body will twist, intuiting fear

and replacing it with here-ness, exhibit of

faithfulness. Wordlessly saying, Be not afraid,

Beloved, for the present exalts us!

Paula Bohince is the author of The Children and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods. She lives in Pennsylvania.

"Possum" by Matthew Wimberly

"Possum Generations" by Caleb Smith

As I go on unnoticed under the clouds

And back onto the logging path

Toward home, I stand at a fork

Beside a rusted vine of barbed wire

Wanting, for whatever reason

(For only a breath) to see myself at seven

Coming upon this spot

Stopping in the same trough of trail,

Eyes looking into a scaffold of trees—

Finding a possum someone strung up

As a warning in a low branch, dead & rotting. I remember

How evenly the skin decayed

Over the jaw

Exposing a wide grin, a laughter—

The body stretched into the outline of sorrow

A broken branch stabbed through

Its side. Dust & fur shed from vertebrae

In summer’s flat light

When I knew little of death—

Only the color it made of bones,

Opaque claws turning turquoise

Before being changed altogether

Into slivers of smoked glass.

And the naked tail

Stiff and furless

Was not terrible & grotesque

But (became beautiful)

A fine lace spun in the wind

The body untouchable

As the night sky.

Always there would be

Something in the bend of that shagbark—

A recess carved from memory

(Where the animal eroded—

A smile unchanged for months.)

I walk ahead until in the distance my porch light

Casts a glow, whorling against the fog

Like a lullaby to no one.

It’s almost winter

Frost covers the wooden steps.

Overhead the constellations are recognizable.

I can hold them one at a time

On the flat of my hand—

Light years scaled down

Across my knuckles.

"He Sets Me In the Stream," a Story by David James Duncan

Photo: Thomas Ives

THE OLD STORYTELLERS OF INDIA, according to my brother Peter, said that when you reached the end of even the longest story you should still be able to remember all the way back to the beginning. I have to work to remember what I had for lunch yesterday. The only thing I remember from the paper this morning is the baseball box scores. But the one and only time my father took no one but me fishing I can still remember the smell of the hot gray cloth that lined my door of the Forty Ford, the motes of dust that burst from that cloth when I slammed the door shut, the stifling heat though all the windows were down; I remember Papa at the wheel, a warming beer between his legs, tuning in the radio (some announcer I’d never heard before, sounded like an Adventist preacher, I wished Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee did the play-by-play for radio and TV both); I remember Whitey Ford still pitching, the score still knotted at 3, Moose Skowron headed for the hospital to have his head examined, the Indians up again, top of the tenth. But for me the game had turned boring. All I wanted was to get to The Wind.

Read the full story.