2, 3, 5, 7,
11, 13, 17,
19, 23, 29, 31, 37.
In the 13th prime of my
life I think back to when I
was last in my prime, at 37.
I divide my age by myself
to remind me there is only 1
of me, now at 41.
41, 43, 47,
53, 59, 61, 67,
71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97.
spent money found glittering in the rain
dropped in a wet pile
now dried and preserved
flattened
a value of a different sort
touching at the edges
Jacaranda seed pods on a cork board at the window.
*
Under the jacaranda tree,
My scooter perches with others
Tilted in shaded comfort.
*
Under this jacaranda tree
Dry seed pods scatter among flowers.
And the forgotten trash of the rush
Grows together until clearing day.
*
My wire basket is heavy with flames.
*
The utility of a dry and seedless fertility.
*
Take flight with me before the downpour.
I open both blinds:
Pull them up on morning light,
Like water, lifted from a shallow well.
I welcome night’s end:
But still, still, I dare not keep
My promises to an unwell future.
Waiting for the green man
To walk the walk,
I stand striped from below
In the dry shadow of my umbrella.
Neighbors drip around me;
Crossing the lines
To flash teeth in selfies.
And, when he walks
In place, in a place
Perpendicular to us –
We rush to him,
Full of thanks and wet habits:
But lonely as arrows
Without targets.
Your brush strokes –
Elegant, poised, impress readers
With fluid wrist dances.
My penned lines:
Ugly with meaning.
Smudged, they leak at their stops.
Your voice is something that makes
more than a noise.
Your vocal vibration
delights and annoys.
In silence, your mouth still steals
a mountain’s poise.
Questions parents may ask
Their offspring.
Often in multiples of many
Until emotions run high.
Are indefinite answers
Any better than silences?
I ask on behalf of others
Too busy to bother.
The reader steals
Words: first the title
Or the author, then
The quotes and the blurbs,
Perhaps even sampling the first page...
Entertained, the thief loses, and buys
The book: gripping words blur into
Paragraphs and chapters,
Until the reader is stolen
By the book...
My mother’s hand wanders straight with her thread,
Sewing my seams echoes my faroff tread.
Step by step her fingers walk with stitches,
Unraveling my travels with needles.
Spring sunshine in her eyes wishes me well,
I depart, clothed in my mother’s farewell.
- I used a Tang Dynasty poem as inspiration for mine.
- Here is the original poem, 遊子吟 (Yóuzǐ Yín), ‘Song of the Wanderer’, by the Tang Dynasty Chinese poet 孟郊 (Mèng Jiāo).
- 遊子吟 (Yóuzǐ Yín) is poem #45 in the 300 Tang Poems.
《遊子吟》- 孟郊
慈母手中線，
遊子身上衣。
臨行密密縫，
意恐遲遲歸。
誰言寸草心，
報得三春暉。
You’re not my distraction. You
are not eye candy for my gaze. You’re
not the minus to my plus. You
are not the cause of my racing pulse. You’re
beautiful for you first, and you
are worth loving on your terms. I’m
not your subtraction, and I
am not part of your equation. I’m
not your opposite formulation. We
are tropical islands without quays. We’re
not together on this ocean, but we
are not traveling alone at sea, are we?
A statue dances
in stillness. Yet we
see the dynamic
of a potential
movement and feel it
deep down in the bones
of our brain and our
perfect memories...
Is that me in you?
Did some artist freeze
me in stone, in bronze,
in sand, in rusty
iron, and steal my
humunculus soul
to make me dance on?
