Mosaic of Life

Tree


Heavenly bamboo stood by my door
wherever I move.
Sharp tiny leaves, spicate white flowers and the dangling red berries
are the flecks of her sun-burnt face.

I saw a peach tree the other day.
On the blackened cranky bones blooms such watery pink as
a teenage girl standing there
with rouge.

Yet the palm tree’s the last to go to sleep when
twilight comes.
With a hanging dead leaf, she touches herself repeatedly
in the ocean breeze.


Cat


If it weren’t for me
he’d be gazing at the hazy fire-flies under a
sharp crescent,
by a pond where grass grows high.
Now he’s sleeping on my lap, glancing at
my eyes.
I think of reincarnation, of its marvel and desolation.


Man


He doesn’t belong and was left
to meet her.
Life is lovely when she stops amidst a sentence
only to study his eyelashes.


Me


I open my night time window,
in flows the Gan River.
Your joke of scattering ashes there
remains in my heart.




* This poem was written after I went through Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The Gan River runs through my hometown, Nanchang.