- Allen Plone
WABI SABI Trilogy
Updated: Sep 27, 2020
By Allen Plone
WABI SABI
to make this poem simple
move it close
to nothingness
devolving from the word
on the page
to the reader’s heart
burn the paper
watch the smoke
rise until it’s absent
a trace of fire
the light still
lingers in the eye
the imperfection
of the ash
black on the ground
dust beneath bare feet
dark stained sole
the thought of the poem
gone
WABI SABI 2
before the letters fell
the page was empty
white sky waiting
upon dark clouds
all that’s new
emerges from nothing
this poem is imperfect
this poem is incomplete
this poem will disappear
as all things do
it will never be greater
than the moment of its becoming
the empty space of the page
one quiet word emerges
the silence of the morning
broken
WABI SABI 3
the perfect poem
is scratched in sand
close to the tide
where the white foam
washes the words away
leaving bits of broken seaweed
traces of the sea’s salt smell
rise towards the circling gulls
below sandpipers rush to the edge
of the receding waves
leaving claw’s prints
that will soon
disappear
Allen Plone makes his living in the film and television industry as a writer and director. He holds a Master’s Degree, Comp.Lit/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and a PhD. History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he taught Philosophy and Creative Writing for 7 years. He also taught at San Jose State University and San Francisco State University. He taught screenwriting at University of Southern California, in their Graduate Writers Program while working as a full-time writer/director. Allen’s passion is and has always been poetry and children’s stories. He’s combined the two in five of the children’s books he’s written; they’re all in rhymed couplets. He has published many poems in such journals as: Light Journal of Poetry and Photography, Moon Journal of Poetry, BTS Journal, The Sea Letter Journal, Celidah: A Journal of Poetry and others. He has also published several short stories, including “The Cowboy of My Heart,” which won the Rosebud Best Short Story award . He’s had three books of poetry published; Have We Met, More Than Song, and Family Matters.