Leaving Taichung Station

Eloquent shortcomings

“Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home…”--Szymborska

An ascension

flying across the spinning world turbulent and lifting 

tomb cleaning, throat clearing, the stars pulled down by a wayward child’s kite

all the endurance and breath-taking through patterned shortcomings

moving them 

this (history)

an unabandoned hope over the ease of abandon

the sky carving and the bone chafing 

the all of it

arrangements and the defining 

silence to silence, 

sound to sound

sand to sand, 

tian bu la

inimical beginnings

the mausoleum of air bellowing damaged syllables

the Ferris wheel in the water’s reflection disappearing

what time is it there

whale bone scrubbed white on the beach

once your hope upended in a tinderbox

Chanos chanos, milkfish stirred in a bowl by a toothless grandmother

as garrulous dreams floundered late in the night of a Beitou alley

while nothing ever ends, the seeds, the ligaments and then death scatters

where love bruised your lips, shadow spun your limbs, head and lungs went galloping in the field

and the monsoon rag colts over rice patties

when the tribe awoke the child’s thumb bent from the bite of the forest’s strong teeth 

a tilting hand to be alive 

honeycombs of sea detritus scraped from your swollen feet

the heart reached limbs in the distance

the birdcalls going down in the morning as small pockets of stone

fish bone caught in your throat

as time unzipped its carcass from life’s ineluctable undoing 

in the rain the world falls into the fingers of a child’s ruby dream
the effulgence of her synapses’ chemistry and call, forestall

the speckled spotted mantiss found on the spine of the old-growth log

beauty and terror and death incarnate

and for whom does its blood pinchers pray, the victims

all

his voice a rusty door opening her somnambulance 

her hands eloquent shortcomings against his skull

the impossible language a tomb in the air

buildings illiterate as they ascend from their concrete flooring

the old poetry of carpentry descending in pieces and puzzles

the hunger-filled light and the boxcars of migratory flight

love, the backwoods where we collaborate

grief, the land where we reassemble and elaborate

and the poets suck sounds off their mother’s bones long and lofty into the night.

have you too spent a lifetime learning to understand how the sky goes on after this

history still not sponged clean or contrite?

For  the poets Holly and Ka-sing Lee , Chiwan Choi and Cynthia Dewi Oka