27 things

1. I must tell you I met someone.
2. Named Gold.
3. Fire burning tight in a small frame.
4. Birdcage, voice box, body.
5. Skin supple, subtle to the eye.
6. I want to, but do not.
7. So much age, so much youth.
8. She laughs and she says.
9. I step back and hold myself back.
10. Half a hundred smiles.
11. Three hundred times of waiting.
12. I search for something else instead.
13. Try again patience, the kind that sees through the last of the ripples so the liquid surface calms again into a mirror of sky.
14. Morning, afternoon, night, the chairs and tables by the streets are with people, warm temperature in the middle of winter.
15. Spark, spark, spark.
16. I dream of the outline of her.
17. Search for something else instead.
18. Is it possible to call it mirror? 
19. Translated into permutations: woman, night, flower, gold.
20. No one remains innocent, not after the wars folded in the years.
21. Are you spring cleaning?
22. I have two rugs and two wooden, folding chairs.
23. There is a list made into existence everyday and made to disappear everyday.
24. Am I waiting? Yes.
25. It is always the same woman.
26. In different translations.
27. The same.

a dark impenetrable forest

It is raining now where I am. 
The heater hums, the gray will not leave
until the weeks of winter will finally
exhaust themselves. In the meantime

the tea, the sound of rain, the days
in the calendar filling up
like things to do that march on and on.
I sense my right eye stooping now
like an old working dog. It means
the glasses will have to be changed.

In the meantime, how to talk about
translation? When everything 
we manifest are truly incomplete.
A student, armed with practice and theory, 
argues: translation is always a gain.
In time

one will know gentleness; and why 
the horizon is what it is: something
perceivable, what we can move towards
eternally, as we would a dream, 
as we would each breath. Always beyond. 

There are many ways to live.
Even the one who ruminates drinks tea,
the bag possibly packed in a factory 
filled with underpaid men and women,
children too, in some developing country 
never far beyond.

All in an open circle.
Echos-monde.
The water from this rain.
Me. You. What the limitations I have
make of You other than the You
that you actually live. What we imagine
of ourselves, of each other. 
To one another.

In the meantime, I write a letter
to a You.
Letter without postal stamp, physical 
address, even a legible name. As though
believing the tangible is an organic case 
always subject to decay, unable to contain
what we are truly trying to reach.

young man

The list for the grocery would be short.
But walking through the aisles, 
By itself, The List would grow, long and
With wings, maybe, as in poultry.
And promising as in spices, sweet like
Dates in a section closer to wines.
It would be important to impress the girl, 
Nope, not soda or beer or pizza.
Not in that old way of wooing 
That she would be a queen, 
In the kitchen.
The young man would show off he could
Make fire and keep a pot warm,
Apologize as well he's no cook, but
She should stay put on the high chair
And enjoy his attempt to show grandly
What he has trouble saying plain.
And the pretext for her coming over?
Anything but a movie on a small screen,
Anything that would lead to the couch,
Anything that would lead to anywhere else
Except the kitchen.
And seeing him trying not to be a klutz
In an apron with a wooden ladle, she
Would most likely offer to cut the onions.
Between the two of them, someone would 
Banter and another would quip,
And laughter a chorus that would fill.
The fried chicken wings, burnt.
The butternut soup, no salt.
Only the multigrain bread absolved.
He: "We got the dates, though."
She: "And this is some wine."

trace

More likely than not, the Japanese
got it right. About the traces
in our lives--our very long lives, 
perhaps, very long till our souls 
grow very tired and very old.
                             And 
more likely, Buddha, as well,
got it right. About the traces
in our lives--our very long lives,
perhaps, very long till our souls
grow very tired and very old.
                            

by the river

A mile from where I am, there is a river.
There are ducks, some other birds. The water
fragments and glistens like glass, and runs
with a sound like bodied spirit-wind.

Sometimes the afternoon walks take me there.
Mostly to see the sun 
set behind the mountains. Beautiful sky.
There are men who sport fish, bass usually.

It is tempting to do the same; though, 
why bait and hook a fish merely for pleasure
stops me in much the same way
I stop myself from crossing what separates 

us.

orange

Landlocked, it is almost merely imagination
that island exists, where the bamboo wind chimes
hang above the door and sunshine spills 
on the floor and still so much left share--
the entire island a lake of sun.

Landlocked in the east, I move the writing desk
closest to the window and place 
the small pot of ivy on the sill. I watch the tree
standing at perfect distance, visible 
from crown to base, turn to fire to charcoal.

Snowflakes come between days. I take time
to watch squirrels and stray cats and walk
afternoons in this country of dreams. Yesterday
the little bookshop at the edge of the town
put up their closing sign. Mostly, all is quiet.

I am coming to know again friends who are sad.
Some mad. Mostly sad. 
These are not secrets. What is all over the news.
But what was I thinking about only four weeks ago,
standing at the edge of the west coast,

inhaling the Pacific?

And do you remember that poem by Gary Soto?
The one about a boy meeting a girl.
He held her hand, and on the other, he held
an orange, and it was bright, bright like fire.

archive

Three nights ago, exactly, I dreamed 
the woman from five years ago 
whom I've lost to Germany, married 

to a man my jealousy--
    how it shames me to myself 
    that one word over which anger 
    appears more dignified or honorable--

could easily stain undesirable,
something I nonetheless do not do.
Knowing it is my own ego

at fault and not the man himself 
who, on an even keel, I hope would
love her more than she does herself,

which is really another way of saying
more than I had, could.
Three nights ago, exactly, I dreamed

her, with a face I have never ever seen
before but still easily recognized
in the way of those eyes, those cheekbones,

those lips, and arms, and the very is-ness
of her. In the dream, she has grown
more toned, stronger in the way I have

no knowing whether it is out of brokenness
or something finally better. Knowing only
how it was so long ago since 

her dancing was a way to
punish her own body, wring out and into it 
the pain of her psyche:

The weight of words, she called it.
One day, she said, you'll never 
see me again... Three nights ago, exactly,

I saw her again in the dream:
the toned muscles, the scent of her,
"air ballet" I thought,

all that cloth, and all that wringing,
lifting as though made light
the weight of being.

Was she happy? I could not ask
in the dream, our faces were so close.
We could kiss, were about to, would

kiss I do not remember upon waking.
Only the recurring sense, as always,
that I had a chance and I chose

to lose it.