Kingfisher - Hai-Dang Phan


for Roya


You are far and I am a falling thing.

My winter haunts our summer hunts

 

when we were blue and blur. Remember?

I remember watching you watching the river.

 

How you wore the sky on your back and the earth

on your breast. How you pierced the river

 

and scattered the clouds. A bolt split through me

seeing you at work and at play, hearing you

 

rattle and rush up and down the river the length of day.

Those spring mornings, I sensed new depths

 

in the meaning of the word alive,

understood how sunlight and mist conspire

 

to reveal us to each other. But each winter

I must lose you to find you again. I see you everywhere,

 

in everything the wind stirs. This morning,

for instance, as I was reading the book of the forest,

 

I noticed how each ghost gray beech tree clings

to its autumn leaves, saw in their trembling

 

the color of your flanks, a copper nimbus

clouding my love-sight. My dagger, lover, queen,

 

eros arrows us to the spot. The river talks

stories of us if you listen, and the trees keep our secrets

 

like moss, like lichen. Maybe memory

is not such a bad thing after all—

 

memory will fly you back to me.

Until then, any perch will do,

 

and a little river medicine.







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