i used to think that time was a stagnant pool
tainted with the sadness of civilization
and when i dreamed, i searched for a fair land
that i once knew, where the lamplight was soft

and my mood of the evening was vermilion, capable
of blushing with a shy innocence..  this life
that  we find ourselves in is distant and soon at an end,
and you begin to realize that  you can only comprehend
a few common allusions in classical poetry
this side of lotus leaves,
that's all there's time for in this life

tomorrow sways gently in the branches
of the weeping willow,  i know that you will interpret
this moment in whatever way is inevitable
in the way you always do things.  you are, after all
stepping to the rhythm of your own life
somewhere between  the Elegantiae and the Greater Odes,

unaffected by any music i chance to make

my love flies over memory
like a white dove
through its leafless woods
and melt-water dribbling over moss

a fragmented life sways with the wind
in the distance on many roads
i have yet to travel, many things
will happen as they must

flowers are blooming in your heart
but there is no trace of the gardener
no matter how hard you deny it
you will still know it's me

the shadows on your wall
are fading to the color of cooling tea,
outside there are traces of spring
you can stand among green leaves
and moss-covered stream rocks

and still always be absent, distant,
like a teardrop, evaporating
in the spring sun, quivering in
transparency and transience

only love is the god of the heart--
only that white dove
that flies over memory

apart, we still share
an innocent, stubborn sky
with a delicate moon
rounding in the theme
of the eternal circle,
a complete darkness following
a full light, the double event
rolling in its reliable procession,
each linked to the other
with no clear ending and beginning.

luminance and mystery,
they lean against each other
just as we do, circling
one end of a dream to the other,
rounding from the dark of distance
to a coming time of fullness
when a long night will end.
morning will awaken
with a sunrise kneeling by the window
like a blushing rose, dew-misted
with a glow distilled and gathered
from all the words of love and hope
tossed across the sky
in a shower of stars
falling on the circling tides

my hair was tied in a youthful ribbon
and my arms were encircled
by the velvety bracelets
of memory.  my necklace was
strung from the pretty stones
of a young girl's yearnings;
my jacket was fastened
with the exquisite buttons of dreams..

the man i used to love ran up to me
and held my face in his hands.
let me look at you he whispered
you look wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
a sudden gust of wind scattered what was left
of last night's loneliness...

we stood like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle
left outside the frame because they couldn't
be made to fit..  the sun pressed closer to the ground...

trees and grass seemed to catch fire

i wanted to write a poem, not only beautiful
and familiar but also profound.
but lately, all roads lead, not to home, but
to chinatown.  since we last spoke
to each other, the number of grey strands
in my hair has grown--one for each day
we've been apart.

if you were here, we could toss three pennies
to make a hexagram, find out if we were really
meant for each other,  eat mooncakes, wear
dragon bracelets,  slurp ginger soup...
in chinatown, everything in life is guesswork
there's no blueprint for love

even as i sit on the balcony, overlooking
water, dreaming of falling stars as
time whispers ghost stories in my ears
nights when stars light up the sadness in my eyes
i am learning how to love as if i were
stumbling with the poet Li Po
on the willow path at West Lake

reaching for remembrance, distant history,
or the meaning of words in a language
never completely acquired

i want to write a poem for you,
i really do.  but these wild threads of rain
have tangled my thoughts and
i'm afraid those grey skies beyond
the window don't really suit you.
i hesitated too long like a river
that lost its direction and
disseminated into a swamp

these posthumous raindrops
are sadly searching the unbearable dawn
for the sun. (seems the sun's shadow
was last seen chasing over the bed
before it was buried under the starlight
of silent moss.)

i want to soothe you with intermittent
softness, i really do--
nudge you with an evening breeze,
pour warm moonlight on your cool
tranquility, embrace you with an
eternal moment where you stand
in a garden of floating butterflies.  (you
are my last poem, a shadow of a feather,
an eternity of falling dew)

wild threads of rain, a muted couch
and... something seems to be missing.
i have the rain, the wind, the shivering leaves
and morning peering around the lake,
i even have the song of a lute among
the reeds but i seem to have lost my
mood for singing...

love drifts and dreams, a daughter of stars
and mist, like musings born of a night
or an elusive scent over a lake on a rainy day.
you ask me to guess that scent--
a braid of lonesome wind?
your heart's winter plum?
wind chimes of july?
chrysanthemums of september?

i have always thought
that the only beauty in life
is to discover irresistible possibility in the impossible.
poised between falling and not falling,
between yes and no;

and i have always thought that the only
sorrow in life is to discover sheer impossibility
among limited possibilities.

so many things left unfinished--
an unkept promise,
some unreadable desires,
and the unacknowledged need
lurking in my heart that beats
irregularly--

yet the sadness in my eyes
signifies that love is
like a dewdrop hidden
in a dry well, refusing to vanish.

perhaps all vows of love
are lies that can't come true,
only in an involuntary shiver,
as bitter as lemon, is one reminded
of those summer nights when love
was still new...

the sighs of midnight
still murmur in my throat.
everything in its compartment--
the how, the when, even the how-much,
has dissipated slowly, steadily
in the evening breeze after rain.

in the endless cycle,
the flux of life;
these things will forever circle and replace each other :
blue skies and rainy days,
anticipation and regret,
the possible and the impossible,

and that which has never been lacking--
beauty and sorrow

almost every sky has a moon,
trees cast comforting shadows
on the trembling surface of the pond
where last night the milky way overflowed.
a small breeze awakens catkins
that release their grip on spring

as silence tiptoes behind the moonlight
to a place far below the horizon,
dawn spreads like fingers of irresistible melancholy
tangling in the hair of the darkest weeping willows
the sun explodes like an incendiary shell
chopping up the morning chill

i'm a co-dependent marshland, just now
taking shape, a swamp stench
in a wilderness without you.
i am a thousand white cranes flying away,
a book of weather written by a lost vagabond,
staggering footsteps on the mountain,  clouds vomited
from hills, sadness emerging from the chimney
of a paper mill reflected in your mirror,
an orchard where golden apple trees have died

teach me      how to be your lover

in the morning
as i lie with my eyes unopened
a flutter of wings
divides a wall of light
tree shadows take me into their arms

in my temple of repose and recollection
i no longer wonder
why you threw pebbles
into the cup of happiness
and disappeared into the slow arrival of sunset

i have come to understand you
and the secret suffering of the serial lover
dawn is a bright fable at my window
where the world is fractured by the wooden panes
of a house built on memories of hope,
self-talk, and the tender grass of daydreams

i understand you now and the hopelessness
of there ever being a happy ending
so why does the past still knock on this window
with lost words and distant illusions
scratching my vision
why when i wake is my tongue bitten by dreams
and frail, frivolous imaginings

bleeding into a gray-scale montage

these are hard times, permeated
with a kind of all pervading lassitude.
but clothed in morning mist, standing
on the balcony, i am connected to all
that lies before me--a wave of tender green

on a hillside overrun with day lilies;
a cloud of bloom on a pear tree like a painting
by a master impressionist flaunting
virtuosity--even the handful of dew
on the dandelion is a small masterpiece

and the tireless blue of the sky
above the haven i have created here
of little wealth and much beauty
and memories that climb a small hill
and melt into the skyline.

i know no other shape than this landscape
that contains me:   trees
staring at sharp-boned shadows
of themselves in the gem-fingered sunbeam;
the leaves, hushed and still, reverent,

peering up the skirts of the clouds;
fiercely optimistic spring light
clinging to my hands and hair;
magnolias soft with blossoms
moments

before they fall