A Letter From China (A Poem):
A letter from China arrived today,
across the ocean from Guillin mountain.
It was a sealed parchment, soaked in yak’s
milk:
I smelled the aromatic fragance of a
distant land.
I broke the seal (red) but did not understand the
writing:
scribbles about concubines, warlords, empty
bedchambers and sand particles from outer Mongolia.
I did not need to understand the words
because my heart
already understood:
the layers of silk hidden in my being:
the garbled hopes and dreams,
mixed with the legacy, the tragedy
of a hundred
thousand years of ancestral blood- flood,
flowing from parchment into
my skin like slamon travelling up a stream.
