When the Man's Eyes Turned Silver
When the man’s eyes turned silver
the sea wind carried the child across the world
entangled and dented and life-cargo'd
green rain unlocked all you had expected or ascertained
once
you could not have dreamed stars shimmer like teeth
you dared not listen to the rain racing down the mountain like a serpent
you did not imagine her waiting inexorably
under a lantern, red as an embryo’s heart luminous through pale shell
but the beacon in the night was intact, you
where the sky dragon pulled nightly an opal door
where the river god’s long white tail swept the homes’ elders free
and the moon witch combed out the dark's dandruff
the world waited for both of you to stitch the fractures in the sky, together
it took you 50 years to understand what the story meant when the trees awoke
it took you a moment to unravel the book as the hovel’s pockmarks unplastered
meaning came to the child after a bunker of sleep
meaning comes to the adult under a hot collaboration of skin and rhyme and bones
the bucket of the snow fell upon your breath once in December's opening, a folktale
and froze into memory flake by flake and you cracked as porcelain family vase
the child untucked the night
the grown dropped their notebook where diddly-squat and death collide
heart met earth like a Formosan blue magpie skipping v's in the rain, your long-tailed mountain lady
you wallow the all-around stirrup in the gut and the heart whelps and the each of you count touch of tip and the barking lights in the windows of the buildings and private mismatched cravings sounds that come out along the arms at night and the touched bellies as song the scent play ghosts against the constellation of his banging and her shimmering at dawn counting coal to lung carbon and all that hot pot ‘s sweet spice dreamed under a battle with honor and humanity and the cooing going cold from the gold in the flight of the constellations unhung at night
the wing voice of amalgamation together they dined on death
flowers grew from their trunks and the world unbuckled upside down
the mountains of Alishan undressed forests and shed their burgeoning bark
from the child’s weary body to the drought-dry adult’s mouth
words river-red, sight coin-silver and you the moon’s mistress, begun
the tale dragged up the mountain
the two I’s became a singular you in the cosmos’ carapace
the shorn hair put long away in a dirtbox by a cove marked by raccoon scent and poem kindling
in death on the coast pinecones came alive and ancestors entered in twos and fours
do hear them chorusing, still
exit dragons, enter the ghost
when language set down in a row and began you.
for the writer Grace Lin
