Dan Tian


The old Chinese woman
does Qigong on the sidewalk
that slopes downward
like a gentle rolling hill.
She is a graceful crane
with a shock of white hair
and face stolid in morning light.

I stand by the mailbox
listening to the voice from her radio
give instruction in Mandarin
between the crackles of airwave 
silence.  There was a time
when my feet were planted
in grass, unwavering and calm.




Pariaman, no more


            for Sumatra


The mosque's minaret
has succumbed to the earth
as she swallows whole
villages in her muddy mouth.

A great underground
t h u n d e r   erupts cascades
of rock and thick mud,
envelops a wedding party

at the foothills of the bride's
childhood home.  Her most
precious union sealed in darkness,
her unborn children, myths once again.

Those that still roam find
hands petrified up from the land
like human plants searching
for sun.  The dead are carved

from clay by villagers, culled
today only to be replaced
from whence they came
with a prayer for the sending.




The place we connect to the earth
 

I sit fascinated by the tenderness
in his voice as he speaks, imbibing
the curve of a woman's foot
with languid fantasy.

               the arch is ivory silk
               with feathered creases
               to be lost in

His language a confabulation of hushed
words that lick all the angles turned
by her heel hanging over the bed's edge;
his smile overwhelms me.

               heart strings plucked
               with the simple curl
               of her painted pink toes

Pleasure hangs on his lips like an epoch,
hands caress the solid air as if her foot
existed beneath his delicate fingers, as if 
he could smell the jasmine lotion on her skin

               I slide my striped sock
               over ankle, toe and heel.
               I want him to tell my soul
                                                what
                                                matters.




Pan/dora


Skylight angled at forty-five
degrees, restless moon
haunting the rims of wood
sparkling off kitchen steel 
and everyday glass,
awaiting a simple gesture.

The
           cupboard
                                  opens

and closes to something
magical and romantic, a ripe
Pandora's box without
the stardust and chaos,
but with leaned words
laced in fragrant pollens.
 



White Noise


What does one do when haunted
by the white noise of your body?
Long hours alone with riffled papers,
fingers tapping lightly on the desk,
a heaved sigh at banality and its
mere existence in the world.

Each sound laden with its own emotional
consequence and reference that is not
easily distilled; the process
of evaporation requiring more heat
than this chill will consent to.

The whisper the pencil makes
moving dutifully across the page
is an act of love; it captures
the abstract notion in amber
to be discovered in a farther place
and time, but not here, not now,

and all that is spoken about luck
boils down to how far your heart
is willing to open and for how long.
There is no luck in love, only change 
and discovery and rekindled fires.