2 poems by Debra Black

Boketto: The Act of Gazing Into the Distance

tap-dancing into the sea,
gazing into and between
the here and there,
the formless formlessness,
the never-ending horizon,
edgeless perfection
of nothing and everything,
perfect emptiness.

floating into the timeless sky
graced by a single lotus,
white translucent pearls 
in the sky.




Wabi Sabi: Beauty in the Imperfection of Impermanence and Aging

shining from within
chipping, cracking, breaking.
a map of the soul,
of life and death,
growth and decay,
revealed in its many fissures
and tributaries
empty yet full.
constant motion,
erratic change.
the beauty of 
impermanence
embued with a glaze
of graceful acceptance.
the beauty and sadness
of life’s constant
impermanent (im)perfection.

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Debra Black is an award-winning former reporter and feature writer with the Toronto Star. Her most recent poetry has been published by Spillwords, Word City Literary Journal and Queen’s Mob Teahouse. In 2021 in collaboration with a Toronto visual artist,  she published A Call and Response: Words and Images, which was inspired by the pandemic.  In late 2022 she published a collection of poetry – Love, Lust, Existence and other Ephemeral Things. It is available on Blurb.ca, Amazon.ca and Amazon.com

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