FROM THE WATER’S EDGE

There’s no telling where this stream of water begins or where

it winds up after it seeps into my spleen.

The flight paths of those delicate mountain nymphs

have warped the contour lines of beauty: I know deep down

how those dragonflies with butterfly wings

can tantalize, so elegantly, the Adam’s apple of the air,

forcing the canyons to cry out in nervous chills, even though

memory’s pump has drawn water

from cliff crevices to the narrows of the tear ducts,

and deep down I know how the wild goose in the glistening light of ripples,

nursing a wound in the water, will bolt when startled to cast off

a vast sheet of shimmering pain.

                          So to cut

to the quick, I plunge into the water headfirst

and flounder around in the harsh cold of it all. First,

like a dragonfly nymph, I keep to the shadows and stay humble

among the pebbles. Then, as a fish blows bubbles into

a yawn, which you deposited under my skin, as bright and bewitching as daybreak,

I begin to form a faraway air bladder that will

contract whenever you're sad, leaving me

no choice but to roll over and show the white belly of bashfulness.

                                                     And yet,

most of the time it will just be like a water lily

swaying with the waves between my ribs, or

like a Kongming lantern* lit on the water’s surface,

guiding my slowly drifting lightness. When I’m light

enough to break the surface,

I find those dragonflies have turned into

cloud fragments in the shape of sleep itself, while I’ve

become their wintry snoring, barely audible as they lie

upon the water’s surface.

                    And where are you?

Are you dangling from my eyelashes? Can your word “No”

still entrust itself to a string of bird songs and be spread

through this dusk covering the mountains? The wind blows

a setting sun from out upon the water and, like a red fox,

it dodges into the grove. Only then do I see it:

the waterfall upstream shines bright, flows clear,

just the way you look when you rush out, shimmering

from inside this body of mine.