someday maybe you will see me
flying through the frosty woods
of memory, my eyes wide open
fixed far beyond the horizon

my pupils searching for
something luminous and lost
maybe you will see me
washed up on memory's moist beach
beside a track of lonely footprints

maybe you will feel my hands
lightly tickle your ribs like fins
as i swim through your heart's
red coral reef, my fingers destroyed
by pure love,because my hands have always
been my best language

maybe you will see me
stroking the petals of a blushing rose
or caressing your haphazardly cast shadow
by the waterlily pond of memory
where moonlight overflows into the meadow

my hands will tell you in my best language
beauty is a continuous creation
that knows no gender
not bound by tradition or discipline
love is invisible, indomitable, and timeless
when spoken in the softest touch of hands

do you believe that beauty
is only skin deep? i have
never seen your skin, even though all night
the raindrops have moistened your hair
in my dream.  early morning came
on tiptoe to peep in my window
with a kind of regret.

but what to do about afternoons
and the long, long roads with so much time
unraveling between us?  once, no distance
was too great to disregard.  now windows
glower at each other, lawns burn brown,
and hopeless roses
are crushed by summer's torpor.

it is mid-afternoon
and i am pondering beauty
vis-à-vis the question of skin-deep.
i am trying to track down the answer
in four or five fugitive verses
in a volume of wine-flavored late T'ang
poetry, entitled Song of Eternal Sorrow.
i might find the answer there.

you never know

what country is it that is called
the earth of drowned gods?
i wouldn’t mind going tonight
to York Pond
to swim in the arms of the moon...

we love things that disappear
and are found,  like
bubbles rising from
the deep diving moon,  releasing
the breath that its been holding.

we love the woven threads
on a loom of liquid
against the sky.

not on a sand bar, but
on a moon bar in Tiger Leaping Gorge
at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain
is where Li Po and i have walked.
and to memorialize that occasion,

i put five stones in my pocket,

that had fallen from a chinese moon

at the edge of my eyelashes
there is a panoramic view
of a zone that misses radar altogether
where once upon a time a young lover
with a handful of scented oil
kneaded and needed my body
on a blanket in a meadow
in a world that now gazes at me
ironically like a line of light
intersecting a shadow of a shadow

i see this zone that misses radar altogether
when i am standing on a bridge
and never getting to the other side
of the opposing directions
when a lover walks away
with a compass
that was made in Taiwan

bridges are always crowded
with many things: a thousand speeding cars
monks in saffron robes
a tunnel walkway full of claustrophobic karma
there’s a jagged fragrance and a jagged finger
pointing at the way i’ve come
and to the way i am always going
but have never reached

there are blue signals changing on the wind,
feelings more subtle than a handful of oil,
eyelashes more delicate than history

i’ve loved and left and never arrived
i’ve dodged cars and love and seductive shadows
left all familiar relations to the past
let the dead bury the dead…

my eyes follow that line of sight
that starts at the edge of my eyelashes
there is a bridge barely stretching
from one jagged end of the heart to the other;

a heart as empty as a sutra
that roams freely on a bridge
resigned to never getting

to the other side

light rain drizzles on silent leaves
like small beads from a broken necklace
or minnows in the waves of a green sea

i want to write a poem
that shimmers like raindrops
with a transient mood of love and mystery

but after the rain the twilight sun
sets in a golden cloud
as the eastern sky turns purple

and night comes like an old cat
with black fur and old bones,
yawning and creeping away
in the mystic moonlight

all of my dreams
melt away in mist
like pale wine floating in a fragile glass
my love-filled eyes are lost in darkened memories

i ache
but it has nothing to do with you,
it has to do with rivers.

and when i talk, you can hear
a long road in it--what i don't say
makes the sound of wind in the trees.

i tend what isn't mine for the having.
if i'm lucky, you'll remember me.

fear of loss    at times
makes me abandon what
i know i must relinquish eventually

and passion makes me love you
as more than an object to possess,
more than a presence--
but as disclosure of the divine.

being seen when you returned my gaze--
not knowing where i ended
and you began--
i thought we engendered
every quadrant of space
(each with no city of origin,
living in the same territory
beyond time and space)

maybe loving means
being wounded by infinity

i ache.
but it has nothing to do with you.
it has to do with shadows on
the unmade bed,  scattered papers,
books in rows and piles, cups
of tea gone cold,
and plates of crumbs
from a banquet we never shared;
like wreckage from a ship spoiled by storm,

it has to do with rivers