A Balance in Wulai
A
bit of wind scampering,
that unabated kiting that had not yet known the shadow-tang of sorrow
and at flight with fear singing past the strain, a lullaby
and over the rickruck raucous,
the with and the other
and the continent of wirld,
the child and the chief bit into the night
the heart’s fugitive cartography
eye-to-eye in front of hamlet and hurt
glib lulling of evocation, an integument of riddled sympathy
face-to-face with the loneliness of senescent stomping-grounds
and the two of you left from the cliff through the curtains of the waterfall,
the cadence of enervated limbs caught between the rooster’s call and a wet kiss
the elder’s stone knife and warning once dismissed.
Yet
language lay lackadaisical on the hill remnant above Taipei
a body’s remains gapping contention, an arrow in its throat
the left divestiture, to the right hawk, crow and ghost
an inauspicious song looming along the spine of Yushan,
typhoon and rackle, the story a fault line,
a call rhymes up the hill
a grandmother’s clack, the crack in the teacup teetering,
gemstone ghosts and tatoo amore.
A
drop of water from the monkey’s bark springs the tree scattering,
Ama’s story or your own rests on the largest side
the black boar arched up, scampering and languishing in the weeds—
the tides howling fall below or the stones from the ancient gods laying to rest
knee, knife and crag along the velly and valley cloud eye, the lines on the back of her hands.
Are there fallen places above and below remaining, ever?
For: Tobie Openshaw, Sean Kaiteri, Michelle Kao and Amang Hung
