SPRING EQUINOX

Amid the forest’s stately silence,

glints at a riverside

rife with flowering ginger,

the bows of its heavy blossoms

inviting memory. A mountain breeze

familiar, cool as midnight, stirs the water,

mussing my hair almost in rebuke,

calling and dismissing mid-day clouds.

See in the mud of the riverbank

a handprint, hasty, unexpected,

as if to say a forest siren

were lost, and when we approached,

fled like a vanishing memory.

There in the deep solemnity

of wilderness, her sparkling shadow

swayed on the riverbed, promising

the southeast wind would rise,

its own talisman.