Jenny Ward Angyal

Alchemy

A stone statue of Guanyin, goddess of mercy, half buried by leaf-drift and listing to one side, slowly sinks into the earth. Her hair and hands and robe are flecked with gold, recalling King Midas’ unfortunate daughter. But it’s not greed that transmutes the goddess. It’s goldspeck lichen—gathering sunlight, crumbling granite, feeding fern and forest. The elixir of life.

Guanyin hears
the cries of the world...
robin song
and the earth-turning 
music of the worm

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About the Author

Jenny Ward Angyal has written poetry since the age of five and Japanese short-form verse since 2008. The author or co-author of seven books of tanka, tanka sequences, and tanka-prose and haibun, she’s a global moderator of the Inkstone Poetry Forum. She lives with her husband and one Abyssinian cat on a small organic farm in central North Carolina.

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