unaccustomed sunlight,  flutter
of a stray snowflake wavering in the cold ...

my first house was built on shadows,
the second was built on the day's last breath.

darkness resided in the hand-dug well,
a cylinder of green coolness

and rain scampered on the sheet-metal roof
telling stories my children loved to hear.

my third house was built on an oriole's last moment
of daydreams. my reflection celebrated loneliness;

beauty was the sadness of impermanence
barely concealed by the dying light.

among the trees that rustle through
the night's saltiness,

there are three languages: sound, smell,
and forgetfulness.

all of my houses have been makeshift rooms
of fleeting dreams

lost among footsteps engraved on dust.
i have followed a dream that has eluded me

on a road winding through
a patch of globe thistles

severing the wind to pieces

love is an image
of mountain ranges encircled by clouds
on shifting water.
drifting and silent, evening mist far
from the foothills and the woods' edge
slowly and tidelike drowns this wasted sky.
my solitary shadow faces a dark road
like a ship without a compass
lost in the fury of the sea.

courage of the soul is the secret
to a life of dignity.
the thick fog lifts to the steadfast light
of the curved, jade-like moon
peeping through the clouds' openings.
every day i have to believe
that there is some beauty
behind the gauze curtain of tomorrow;

the azure sky, the moonlight--
these are what sustain
a mountain pilgrim

the balcony has fallen asleep
under snow, tired of a small world
that is so big, there is no understanding it.
a poet once said that spring has rotted--
that it has become a frozen heap of compost
buried under winter.

the wind chime is stiff and still. music has
drifted away like light snow on a small wind.
i do not understand how other people love--
fickle as an early spring night--
whereas my love has all the inexorability
of winter.  i know that somewhere,
underneath the silent snow,

there are" leaping fish and flying birds"
and silence tiptoeing along a sleeping balcony.
but if you listen with all your late nights, you can hear
love dying young everywhere
for reasons winter cannot fathom.
like an inland child's first glimpse of the ocean:

it's too much.

i don't understand.