A Way of Waving || Wavering Away (contrapuntal)

[Read first down each column, then again row by row across columns.]
A Way of Waving		Translated from the English Wavering Away
A snake slithers		Like ribbons fluttering
across blacktop		at the ends of handlebars
then ungrips its skin		molted when fledged
at the shrugged shoulder		to the shed.
Night crawler escapes		Like cassette tapes,
from flooded turf		Play pressed,
to be impaled and		rewound and
plunged into deep water		unspooled by appetite.
Vines creep up trunk and branch,		Like telltales on shrouds
grope into air		flail from windward
blindly indicating		to reveal the direction
into empty space		where you cannot directly sail.
Seaweeds sway		Like how ocular floaters
in tidal pools		of vitreous humor,
sniggering against a snorkel mask		occluding sea and air,
while breaths squeeze through a tube,		inspire through averted vision.
V formation of migrating geese		Like my migraine aura,
with pulsating wings		a corona borealis flickering
slides overhead		from fovea to periphery
toward the horizon,		is a benediction from God.
A snail ventures out		Like how my GPS wristwatch
during full-moon night		under satellite sky
leaves a trail of ooze		records my position every other second,
shimmering in starlight from unnamed constellations		life’s legacy of disconnected dots.

John K. Kruschke

First published in Cold Mountain Review, Spring & Summer 2026, May 08.

Notes: Nature waving on the left, human nature wavering away on the right, reflecting each other when read across columns.

Regarding the format: When reading a poetry journal that presented English translations beside originals in languages I don’t know, I realized that the translator could write anything, and I’d have no way of knowing whether it matched the source. I was also piqued by the heading that appeared above them: “Translated from the Chinese” (or whatever the language). So I imagined a genre of poems called “Translated from the English” in which the translation is a free-association based on the original, such that each enriches the other. I added one essential rule: the pieces must be contrapuntal, reading coherently and generating emergent meaning when scanned row by row across columns; otherwise they’d just be two parts of a single poem.

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