Lunar new year

they were going to face the great goddess
to the sound of snapping mahjong chips

three generations sleep in line in
adjacent room

it was the new year

fireworks cracked 9 floors below
becoming old words spoken in the future

ancient thrusters roared to subtitled
narration

neil armstrong placed one foot gently
on the surface of the moon

lovers

across the bay
dressed in fluorescent light
a betelnut girl waits in the late
afternoon sun to plant red lips
on a fisherman collecting
seaweed in the hazy morning
of the opposite shore

artifact

one wheel leans off curb
parked at angle

beside rice paddy field

footsteps depress through mud

in the distance foggy clouds slip off tree-
topped mountains to outline

a mosquito banging its head against
window

the road ahead is closed to flood

Haulien by the sea--

Guanyin you watch the sea
carved in stone, un-moving,
you are perfect, serene, compassionate,
do you hear the screams a continent away?
over the skip of rocks in the tide?

Guanyin can you see past the
mercurial pacific that's merely
a splinter of the essential mind?
I cannot see your tears,
what has man done to you?
are you here to protect the sea?

Guanyin are you lost on this emerald island?
is it a mistake I've found you, bled of colors,
unable to turn your eleven heads, twenty-two ears to the pain
of worldliness and attachment?

Guanyin am I asking too much?
please let me know?
Guanyin are you the resurrected Christ? I won't tell.
Guanyin have you heard of our barbaric western religions?
do you listen to the Taoists stories about you?
are they true?

Guanyin will you help us no matter what?
will you place the lotus in my hand and breathe pink into its soul?

Gunayin I am sorry I have pierced your solitude
to ask you meaningless questions, but I've many more.

Guanyin how many high tides have you witnessed here?
how many typhoons? how many shipwrecks?
How many fisherman caught in undertow? how many many deaths?

how many oceans have you cried with your twenty-two eyes?

Braids

Along the river bank,
gardens,
uncontrollable green vegetation,
beside concrete graveyards,
broken military installations abandoned,
overtaken with weedy tresses,
mangy junkyard dogs nip at bike wheels,
tongues slack from mouth,
show broken teeth--
if you gun it
they'll chase
so we roll to a stop
already they turn their heads
faced around the curve
for next scooter
--road skirts the water, closer,
no camera on red lights,
no stop signs,
five minutes from city center
the long hot country awaits,
brown dirt hills,
speckled with grass,
hazed by smog,
leaning bamboo,
scattered stone.

Lanterns

the last grey sky
hid within it
Chinese lanterns
burning in the rain
cast up from
villages hidden
among green wet mountains,

barely visible between
phone line power line
thick clouds steaming heat
power line phone line
flickering figures
with what words to say,
I could not know,

gone among now
the mining towns, golden waterfalls
sheets of sky, gone wishes
molten air, thousand miles
receding--

an empty mirror;
the afternoon.

Avalokitesvara on the Shore

On.
The skipping pebbles said to me.
Onward now.
and back.
We have been washed and worn.
Rounded
by tides
by the waves.

The color of toothpaste, I said.

What? (as gray clouds
from central mountain peaks
weighed down)

The waves,
they were the color of blue frothy toothpaste,
there was no sand.

And the sky,
the same,

it reflected the stones.

Vacations

You exist in typed words

and messages left

with intent to reply,

It's spring and oceans

warming to swimmers

hide you from me,

endless blue sky pushes out

and away against the clouds

moving north to find a place to rest,

or readying for rain,

They say you're miles away,

it feels like more,

I'd count them but they don't make tape measures that long,

or so the woman at Home Depot says,

I think you're on an island somewhere,

in the spring, in the summer,

in the past, morning when its night,

a day before and a day behind,

The summer is waiting patiently for your return,

light on steel wings and rudders,

over ancient temples, decayed cities

and painted rocks,

The wind carries word from you,

the spring has your name in its air,

and when the past catches up,

I'll be there to see it.