A Poem by B.T. Joy

Reading Jinzhu Ridge 

 

      Dry blooms are shivering in the varnish trees. 

Lines of white daffodils bend on greenish hills. 

Wang Wei is up on Jinzhu Ridge again, 

not a buddhist yet, but writing buddhist poems.

I imagine this as some time before the war. 

The spring wind tugs childishly on his grey robes. 

Out of the sharp grief he felt, thin as a bird, 

under the shade of his dead mother’s shrine

I see him smiling beneath his thinning facial hair. 

Never one to write about the things people do 

he has found the most direct road over mountains; 

a path that even the woodcutter doesn’t know.   

 

 

 

 

B.T. Joy is a Scottish poet and fiction writer living and working in Glasgow. He has published poetry and short fiction in journals, magazines, anthologies and podcasts worldwide; including poetry in Forward Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Presence, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond and The Newtowner and horror stories in Static Movement, Surreal Grotesque, James Ward Kirk Fiction, Human Echoes, MircoHorror, Flashes In The Dark, SQ Magazine and Forgotten Tomb Press. After receiving his honours degree in Creative Writing and Film Studies in 2009 he went on, in 2012, to receive a PGDE from Strathclyde University and has since taught as a High School English teacher. He is also the author of two volumes of haiku In The Arms Of The Wind (2010) and The Reeds That Tilt The Sky (2011). His haiga have appeared with the World Haiku Association, Haiga Online and Daily Haiga. He was one of six writers nominated for The Ravenglass Poetry Press Competition of 2012; judged by Don Paterson. For further information on writing and publications please visit the writer’s website: http://btj0005uk.wix.com/btjoypoet