Tom Crawfords falling

Outside it's Korea and snowing.
White flakes float in under the eaves
And slide sideways into my window.
Inside I'm talking to this big Asian ink brush
about a fish I'd like us to draw.
I've loaded it with the blackest ink
And now I'm holding it, poised
Over a clean sheet of 3-fooot-long, white paper.
I'm keeping my voice down
Though I'm pretty excited
And the snow falling outside doesn't help
But here's what I say, "You know
Already from the way I'm holdong you
that I'm not an artist."
All right, that's out in the open.
It can't hurt, I figure, to own up
To what the brush knows anyway.
"I'm asking for just one terrible black fish," I say
And in ch the brush closer to the white paper.
I know it's cheap of me
To imagine the brush could actually be temtped this way.
Outside snow's beginning to pile up
On the metal railind, the patio.
The bare branches of the maple below my apartment
Look like tall zebras. Very beautiful.
In the distance the buildings of Kwangju
Grow even bigger, darker, in the falling snow.
"This fish, I only want to look at it!" I implore.
"If not the whole fish, then at least some part of it,
Draw me an eye for god-sakes!"
I hate it when my voice gives me away
Like some old man who's discovered
He's on the wrong bus.
In my hand is a long lenght of yellow bamboo
With a shock of horse hair black with ink.
Made in Korea, it says,
And not the Romantic Perioud. I let that go.
there will always be the detractors.
Outside it's growing dark, Presbyterian
As the red, neon crosses begin to come on
Across the city.
I put my tongue on the glass window
To feel the cold,
To feel what snow feels.
If I could leave my body right now
Where would I go mroe amazing than this-
This black fish for company,
Alive down there somewhere in the paper
and me, up here,
Happym alone in the snow.

-Tom Crawford (taken from My story as told by water-David James Duncan)