The String Across the Shore

For Bella, my love, and all who watch from the other shore.

I. Time Lag

Your dusk

is my dawn.

My tea cools.

Your coffee

begins to sing.

The same sky

we make into

two

different kitchens.

You reach

to turn off a lamp.

I happen

to open a window.

Your clock

lags twelve hours behind,

yet ticks

the same.

Like two ends

of one string

plucked

by the same

unseen hand.

II. Cursor

Words half-spoken.

The cursor blinks.

Forty minutes.

Then

it dies.

The screen goes dark

like a living room

whose light

suddenly

goes out.

You send a moon.

It catches

the dark

just in time.

III. The Sea

You ask

what lies beyond the sea.

I say:

the cloud you missed

when you looked up.

That cloud,

a witness,

drifts toward me.

I watch its whole life

for you.

Then it scatters,

a finished

sentence.

You laugh:

clouds drift away.

I say:

then watch the moon.

Each night

the moon repays

a little light

to the sea.

No hurry.

No questions.

Like a debt

with no due date.

The tide

is the crease

your turning

leaves in the sheet.

The Pacific

is only

a larger sheet

between us.

Also

a longer

string.

IV. The Wall

A wall at your place.

A wall at mine.

We each

cut a window.

Window to window.

Between them

a whole

afternoon

and half a cup

of cooling tea.

In your window

a pot of mint.

In mine

I wait for

snow-white words

from the sky.

The mint sprouts.

Snow falls on me.

For a moment

I want

to close my curtain.

I don't.

I push the window

open

a crack,

letting snow's cool

drift to

your mint.

V. The Bell

The church bell

rings.

You hear it.

I hear it.

The ringer knows nothing:

yours

still walks the air.

Mine

already sits

in the pew.

They never

sit down

together.

But always

on the same

road.

VI. The Blank

Canadian wildfires.

I bow to pray.

A few words.

Then

stop.

Not amen.

Just

forgot

what comes next.

I lay the phone

face down

on the table.

So long

the back burns,

like pinning

a frightened bird.

The bird

has flown.

Three o'clock sun

slants through my window

onto the blank page.

I said

today

I would finish

that poem.

Still white.

But sunlight

moves across it

slowly,

a patient cat.

The air where you are

is now the worst on earth.

Between us

a whole wordless afternoon,

and a burning

without name.

I open the Bible.

That page

is blank.

VII. The Body

Your body

I have not yet reached.

My body

you have not yet seen.

Two cities

across the time difference,

each

alive alone.

My right hand

promised

to your left side.

That place

is kept for you.

Your pillow is long.

Two depressions.

One is you.

One is the me

you arranged.

Beside me, the Bible.

A corner folded

by you,

like a sentence

to remember.

More words

still

in the place

without characters.

One day

we will lie

in one bed,

two letters

finally delivered.

Wrinkled envelopes.

Clear handwriting.

The sender

known

at a glance.

VIII. The Wind

The wind brings

what you left unsaid:

today's bad air,

words stopped halfway,

held breath.

You quickly shut the window.

What I send on the wind,

may the wind remind you:

one word

we have read

for many years.

Each time

a different meaning.

Each time

closer to living,

closer to each other,

closer

to the first

voice.

The wind has seen

all love,

all leaving,

all the human world.

It knows all.

Says nothing.

It only blows,

through you,

then me,

carrying

your half-finished laugh,

my half-spoken words.

That blank,

folded by the wind,

laid

beside my pillow.

IX. The Light

Light traveled far

to reach you.

It left

before we were born.

It arrived

while we talked.

You read

the poem about 1995,

the year we did not meet.

Your voice low,

careful not to wake something.

I say

amen.

Then silence,

like clean cloth

falling from the sky,

covering

two nights

twelve hours apart.

Your phone

beside the pillow,

screen down,

another lamp

no one turned off,

lighting

the empty half of the bed,

like a Bible page

open

and blank.

The cursor

blinks again.

Forty minutes.

As you read this

I have been in the light

loving you

a long

long time.

So long

that love

has turned to salt,

and a habit

before sleep

I cannot break.

X. Return

Not the earth's

last turn.

Just an

ordinary Wednesday.

We finally stand

on the same shore.

You arrive.

I arrive.

You only say:

The road was long.

I say:

Yes.

But the wind

was always with us.

Side by side

we watch the sea.

The same sea.

But this time

on the same side,

watching it

push the far shore

farther.

Like turning a page.

The next page

blank.

Finale. The String

The first string

is still vibrating.

From the moment

two hearts

were placed on different shores,

the vibration never ceased.

Stars brightened and dimmed.

Tides rose and fell.

The string

kept sounding.

It sounds

in every gap

between your speaking

and my silence.

In every draft

of opening

and closing windows.

Each time I look down

at my hands' strength,

holding nothing,

yet holding you.

Until one day

someone asks:

What is love?

We are silent a long time.

Then

you whisper:

In the beginning.

I say:

Only two empty places.

You:

And twelve hours of dark.

Me:

Then the cursor blinked

forty minutes.

You:

Then a moon

caught it.

Me:

Then tea and coffee

sang together.

You:

Then someone made

a bed.

Me:

Always empty.

You:

But already prepared.

Then I say:

Let there be light.

You:

And there was light.

That light is not in heaven.

It is in

the second hollow of your pillow,

in

the place my right hand

has learned.

Then you say:

Fear not.

The voice is lighter than wind,

but always

on the way.

Then I say:

I am with you.

With you means

my second hand

walks an extra circle

in your body.

Your mint

lives in my snow.

One string breaks.

The sound grows clearer.

Because the place

where strings rest

stays empty,

like a temple

never inhabited

together.

Dream

For My Beloved Wife Bei La 

There is lava

moving.

I find

your

doorbell.

Press it.

The whole Pacific

rings.

You cry out.

It is an

ancient

word.

Vowels only.

No consonants.

Like fire

finding

oxygen—

that first

raw

sigh

before

speech.

The time difference

heals

in this second.

Twelve hours of fracture

filled

by something

scalding

and alive.

We arrive

together.

Two drifting continents

reassemble

in the dark.

Along the fault line

rises

a place

without borders.

There,

new life

stirs

with the tremor

of genesis.

To Bei La, My Wife: A Garden Without Sound

— writing one line of roses into the world

1

At four in the morning, a rose

wakes in my fingertips.

First it uses dew

to wipe the dark clean,

then it slows the whole city's pulse

by half a beat.

2

The petals haven't opened yet

when the first train outside

grinds steel into pollen.

A muffled blow

deep in the tunnel

opens into a corridor

of rust,

unclaimed.

3

At six, wind comes in from the sea.

A letter I never sent last night

is pushed into the flower's core.

The rose translates the address

into a way of not speaking:

—for everyone who never got to say it.

4

At eight, sunlight falls straight down.

In the cut, the rose

grows small echoes.

They climb the glass curtain wall

and coat Guangzhou

in a chime no one can hear.

5

At noon, crowds on the crosswalk

trade shadows.

The rose folds the shadows

into paper cranes

and sets them on the traffic lights.

They don't fly far.

They stay there,

practicing a stillness

that looks like flight.

6

At dusk, neon rehearses

its own going out.

The rose wants to knead

what light is left

into a dark red moon,

but it can't—

the light leaks through its fingers.

Only the busy tone

in an unanswered phone booth

says goodbye

for it.

7

At midnight, the city finally

learns to breathe with its ears.

The rose lays its last petal

on your eyelashes.

That's as far as it gets.

Every unfinished night

blooms at once—

no scent,

no sound,

only a whole garden

without sound

falling into place

the moment you close your eyes.

The Grammar of Love

I. Entrance

You stand between column and sea,

a comma held between two clauses—

to your right, architecture's arrogance;

to your left, water's endless revisions.

A stone bench.

Empty.

II. The Architecture of the Body

Puffed sleeves gather two shells

where the Pacific's first cry still reverberates.

The moon in your clavicle's hollow

refuses descent. Now it leans.

Your hands fold across the lower belly—

all civilization's first

vigil. Or watch.

Wind finds the first gap between ribs.

Halts.

Becomes echo.

A removed coat. Over the chair's back.

III. The Archaeology of the Heel

Ten centimetres of stiletto

probe time's soft tissue.

Each step excavates:

yesterday's sand, the day before's salt.

Human reason: loose sand.

You are singled out from it—

salt.

Though you have worn yourself

into

a walking sea.

One lace undone. You do not bend.

This is more you than any metaphor.

IV. The Face: Unnamed Republic

Short hair. Black.

None of the long-haired narratives—

waiting, winding, wind-dishevelled.

You look at the sea.

The sea does not belong to you.

Cross earrings. Small instruments

measuring how much devotion

one blink evaporates.

A bead of sweat. From behind the ear

into the collar.

You let it.

V. The Curtain: Absent Narrator

To the right, white curtains, gathered

like a letter interrupted

midway.

Outside, the sea rehearses.

Waves: the false pens of scribes,

scoring out, scoring out.

And what takes us?

The thirst

still unnamed.

Half a glass of water on the sill.

No one recalls placing it.

VI. The Metaphysics of Love

Beloved Bei La.

The first syllable:

the crack when the narrow door

opens toward you—

the second:

the light

sudden behind it.

And Jesus

the narrow door

the light

the Word.

On my tongue.

His echo:

the spring of life.

The sea invents vastness beyond the pane.

I stand waiting

for a key.

That key opens,

and none can close.

VII. Coda: Light

If now light pours from behind you,

the high slit becomes

a wound of light—

you stand between column and sea,

between seeing and being seen,

between name and silence.

Wind stills.

The bench remains bench.

The coat remains.

You watch the sea,

not knowing

a pillar from the temple of Elohim 

has quietly come before you.

The sea watches us

and continues, revising itself.

Morning Tide

When you rise, the whole Pearl River wakes.

We drift on a sampan, two stamps swollen soft by rain,

each mailed to the other's harbor of the unconscious.

Morning light nails itself inch by inch into the sea's horizon.

Below the hull, the swell reckons the formula of rise and fall.

You grip the line and say the waterline is cracking inside you.

A resonance keeping no clock of day or night—

reefs grinding against the seams of cloud.

When the chart suddenly folds its damp spine,

we both lay hands on the light of mollusks.

The porthole cakes with last night's sweat.

And the lighthouse still blinks, up there in the sky.

No need to ask which way the tide will turn.

We have long been each other's

continental shelf, stranded.

The Bean's Dream

Yours—

that single grain—

set out alone last night.

No farewell.

It rolled the Pacific's bedside,

twelve hours of dark

its only mail route.

Arriving in my dream,

worn smooth

into

a heart.

Still beating.

Still entering my voice

through your secret language.

I held it under my tongue,

told it of the Beginning,

the first

Way of Life.

It grew vivid.

It spoke my name,

matched each sound it had heard,

until every syllable

became

forever.

It listened.

It feasted

the whole night through,

nourished by my blood,

warmed by my life.

Before dawn,

it turned for home,

carrying a scrap of morning,

a scrap of my warmth.

Waking,

beside your heart,

something very small

has arrived.

JET LAG

Three p.m. there.

Here, light is tired.

I called in Chinese—

the ocean took it.

I tried English—

it drowned at the meridian.

Silence crawled up your steps,

soaked,

and waited.

You read it.

You turned off the light.

You became my time zone.

Compass cracked.

Only a circle left.

Center, you.

I orbit,

held by my own gravity.

Two bodies,

half a globe apart,

turn in the same second.

God reads poems.

Otherwise the plane trees

on Shanghai Road that year

would not sound the same

in every city.

The Dining Table on the River of Longing 

The steamed fish lies on its side, 

cheek pressed to the plate, 

an overcooked eye 

staring at the ceiling. 

Your scarf. 

Friction. 

Static. 

A distant kiss 

arriving at the speed of light. 

My lips move. 

A complete kiss 

held hostage in the mouth, 

like a glutinous ball 

too hot to be swallowed. 

I lift a blanched shrimp. 

Dip in sauce. Hover. 

I crack the shell for you, 

pull the vein for you, 

swallow for you. 

A shrimp that has forgotten how to swim 

settles in the stomach, 

like a voice message 

that will not send. 

They laugh, clinking glasses. 

The sound of crystal striking 

like a spiritual hand 

knocking on doors 

that refuse to open. 

I spoon some soup, 

blow on it. 

Steam climbs my lenses. 

I want to see your mouth open 

through the white fog, 

want to feed you. 

See you scalded, 

frowning, 

then laughing. 

But I only send the soup 

into my own mouth. 

Salty. Or bland. 

I cannot taste. 

Every flavor 

must pass through you 

to reach my tongue. 

The phone shivers once in my pocket. 

Like you, ten thousand kilometers away, 

slowly pressing your face 

into my waiting shoulder, 

while my hand 

hangs in mid-air, 

holding chopsticks 

that have become 

redundant.

TO MY BEI LA: DREAM V

I sit at my desk
writing a poem about you.
The nib hangs in mid-air.
A drop of ink falls—
only a black bird,
late,
through the window,
alighting
on your soccer head.

You lie inside my poem.
You are my poem.
I hesitate,
use the eraser gently
on you. When I reach
that spot,
you itch,
but dare not
laugh aloud.

My manuscript is the sea.
You lie on the sea.
From there
flows out
a small river.
The sea begins to ripple.

The screen suddenly lights up—
your message:
"I dreamed of you."

I reach my hand into the dream
from which you have woken.
As if reaching into the Pacific.
I touch somewhere.
You laugh, you moan:
This thing
most longed for.

Dream: The Gray Sweater

You sit on the bed's edge, wearing

a gray sweater I have never known.

Outside, the sea. Beneath the ice,

two fish carry silver in their mouths,

slowly

at play.

Your fingers knit.

The needle tips hold no thread. Only words.

You merely pass through empty, pass through empty,

like a pendulum practicing

on a clock face without marks.

I reach to touch your shoulder.

Slip inside your undergarment.

You shiver once.

The sea tilts suddenly—

the ice splits—

a slender slit—

revealing beneath it

another sky, bluer.

Your lips move.

No sound, yet my heart

reads your lip-shape:

I am your beloved wife.

For

ever

and

ever

one.

For Bei La, My Darling: Dream Three

You stand before the painting.

Waiting

for the water lilies

to float up

from the surface.

Waiting for that bridge

to complete

its other half

in the reflection.

The painting

suddenly moves.

The lilies

begin to contract,

to breathe.

Like those

small-hour calls

between us

across the Pacific—

slowly scudding

on the water.

The room

is dark.

As if I were there

with you,

dabbing at

a patch of

undried longing

with a wet brush.

But light

comes out of my mouth.

You begin to change form.

A sky

turning transparent—

like that corner

Monet could not finish

before he went blind.

Dream：Playing the Piano 

For My Bei La

You are playing the piano.

The keys are white.

They are also black.

But the sound

has only one colour—

that grey

of the last second

before the screen goes dark

on our voice call.

I sit at the other end of the bench.

Or I am the bench itself.

Wood. Varnish.

And that hollow

where your body heat

has slowly

seeped in.

I see a planet

hidden in your eyes.

A universe

hidden there.

Your fingers search

for a chord.

Wrong.

Again.

The third time,

you suddenly

stop.

I accidentally

touch

your G-string.

You lose the calm

of keys

and begin

your own

vibration.

I keep dreaming.

I dream your music

crosses the Pacific,

becomes at the bottom of the sea

a glowing

cable.

Fish swim past,

think it is

some kind

of new

coral.

I wake. My left ear

still hums,

like my hand

far away

still pressing

your love-bean.

Dream：Playing the Accordion 

For my beloved Bei La 

You are playing the accordion.

The bellows

open,

close.

Some ancient

tide

folded

into the wood's

ribcage.

When you draw out,

I contract.

When you contract,

I swell.

We share

one

lung.

Across

twelve hours

of time.

Those buttons,

black and white,

like two people

who love

in different grammars,

speaking

the same

wordless

understanding.

The tune has no name.

Or the name

was pulled apart by you,

scattered

to the corners

of the room.

The bellows

suddenly

still.

You turn,

see me.

"Good you're here.

Just enough

for two

to breathe."

I wake.

My chest

rises and falls

in rhythm,

as if someone

inside me

has been practicing

a tune

never finished.

On the pillow.

I press down.

No sound.

But wind

passes through

my fingers,

carrying

the Pacific's

spread legs,

its salt

and wet.

Bei La: A Narratology of Still Life

I. An Archaeology of Hands

Hands clasped.

Two fossils recognizing each other.

The left remembers the lines of the right—

a certain snowy night, a door left unknocked,

a certain letter half-written.

In the creases of the knuckles

there is skin deeper than skin.

The nails, trimmed to precision,

ready at any moment to dig from the earth

a complete dynasty.

II. The Blankness of the Neck

The high collar severs the narrative.

That curve of exposed neck

is an unmarked watershed on the map.

Veins draw tributaries beneath the skin.

Every pulse

is a coded telegram—

about how time, in places unnoticed,

alters the shape of the riverbed.

III. Testimony of the Earring

The diamond intercepts light,

not to shine,

but to prove the darkness.

It is pinned to the earlobe.

A thumbtack nailing this moment

to the bulletin board of eternity.

It does not sway, does not compromise.

When her head turns slightly,

the world sways,

it remains still—

the only unmoving coordinate

in the entire room.

IV. The Gaze

The gaze is cast beyond the frame.

What is there?

A certain afternoon twenty years ago?

A certain morning half a year from now?

She is not here.

This absence

makes her a mirror for everyone.

Every viewer recognizes in that gaze

their own loss—

what they thought they had put down,

but are still clutching in their hand.

V. The Human as Still Life

The painter says: Do not move.

So she does not move.

But stillness itself is motion—

an inward surging.

Her hair curls like an unfinished draft,

each strand pointing toward a different ending.

The strand pointing toward me—

I beg the Creator to seize it,

to lift us together into the air,

to meet the Lord.

VI. The Judgment of Light

Light descends from the left.

It illuminates half the face,

leaves the other half to shadow.

This is not contrast,

but acknowledgment—

one always lives simultaneously in

two kingdoms. The visible,

and the invisible.

We fix our eyes on what is unseen.

What is seen is temporary;

only what is unseen is eternal.

She sits on the boundary,

as if waiting for me

to speak the word of God,

to open the Scriptures,

to lead her into the Kingdom.

She has already traversed all earthly kingdoms,

knowing that every border here

is the same place,

called by different names.

VII. The Final Still Life

This photograph is taken by the world as an eternal frame.

What is eternity?

It is the diamond learning to reflect no more,

it is the hands finally opening,

finding nothing inside—

Therefore, hold the heart.

Bella—

this name henceforth becomes a verb:

in silent beauty

to await the Spirit sent by God,

to complete

a gentle and resolute

counter-narrative

against the end of days.

Reply: To Bei La, My Beloved

I

When you wrote these lines

I was standing at the edge

of a terrace thirty years ahead

wind from above

carrying salt grains

and the ratio of forgetting

all that you never sent

I have already received—

in the crevices of air

on the inner wall of an empty cup

condensing into

the language of frost

You asked: does light know

what it has illuminated?

I said: light is God

God is the breath of human nostrils

He passes through

and in passing

becomes the part

that is passed through

II

About that city

you remember more than I

I only remember saying

"innocent"—that word

was the only

truth

at the time

the river does not know

it is flowing

the stone does not know

it is falling

the wind does not know

it is forming

A self, today

scrolls filling the belly

the heart comprehending, the ear hearing

the verb called

"watchman"

And I, at the time, was only

one also learning

how to be besieged

learning how to read skyscrapers

as ravines

read silence

as a prayer

in the making

III

That instant you collected

I collected too—

in another currency

in the body's

different denominations

your letter

never opened in a lifetime

yours

is parchment and beeswax

mine is

an open Bible

is the density of bone

and a certain

life one can only put on

at the deathbed of the old self

We each keep

two kinds of ash

from one fire

yours whiter

because never touched

mine heavier

the word of the LORD is fire

I have been

breathing it

it has been

breathing me

IV

You said "outside the world"

I said: no

it has always been

inside the world—

while queuing at the supermarket

the way the sweater of the one ahead

is knitted

suddenly makes you

pause

for half a second

in the subway

a stranger's profile

forming with memory

a brief

optical interference

in all

the moments that "never happened"

yet altered molecular structure

inside the world

everywhere

is the "outside"

you spoke of

V

Thirty years later

I too sit alone

facing a different forest

different birdsong

a different dusk

turning down the love

until it becomes

a hearing test—

testing what frequency

of the unspoken

can still be heard

you watch the dawn

I watch

the posture with which you once

wanted to see the morning star

in the error between time zones and seasons

forming a certain

clumsy

symmetry

this symmetry

needs not

be known

as the stars in the heart

need not know

they are being

reflected by

another star

VI

About "innocent"

I want to say a little more

and theirs

that kind of innocence:

knowing life is but a breath

yet not knowing how to connect

with the source of life

light will vanish

still shining

knowing the letter will not

be opened

still writing

knowing watchkeeping

is one-way

still burning the eyes

into

telescopes

that kind

of innocence

this is the most ignorant

innocence

more unrepentant

than another stone

more incapable of detour

than another river

the Euphrates

VII

Now, you read these words

as years ago

I read the air—

in the untouchable

underwater

in the higher and quieter

place

on the wrong postmark

of time

this letter

too

will never

arrive

but it exists

as your existence

existed

and because

written down

continues

to exist

"outside the world"

"inside the world"

between the two

that

never named

yet always

inhabited

borderland

VIII

In the end, we will both

return to that terrace—

as dew overlapping in memory

into

that archetype

there is

the tribe of Judah

like a forest

birdsong from above

and music

finally learning

that

gentle

way of looking back

we finally recognize

each other

as long-lost kin

Perhaps no need

to recognize

only need

to simultaneously

gaze toward the same direction above

and know

someone is

from another direction

gazing at

gazing itself

IX

You asked if I know

that beam of light?

I now answer:

I know

I have always known

not only as

the object illuminated

but as

light itself

When light is emitted

it produces

that

tiny

shadow—

that because

too close to the source

can never

be seen

darkness

this is the best

illumination

this is my

reply

X

If you want

to reply to this poem

please send to:

every dewdrop

about to evaporate

at the tip of grass

every bell

not yet arrived

in the depths of the canyon

every

you

who once was me

and I

who once was you

those

exact

moments

zip code:

light-year

recipient:

the one between

"outside"

and "inside"

continuously

mailing itself

eternal

postman

UNFINISHED SYMPHONY: FOUR MOVEMENTS

I. Fog and Folds

Shanghai wakes in fog.

Guangzhou too—

only here the fog comes from the south,

the return-south days.

The earth folds.

Fog is the old lining

in the folds.

A dock whistle

tears dawn.

On different shores,

fragments of the same

farewell song.

Silence holds

the unwritten notes.

No word can touch

the distance

between two horizons.

Waiting.

In the hollow of the world.

A string

breaks

and is mended.

No one

draws the bow.

II. Philistine Sea and the Urn

The river remembers every farewell.

Every ship carries one

unspoken name.

Time bends like light on water.

You crossed one sea.

I crossed another—

Red Sea, Philistine Sea,

Babylonian Sea.

In the Philistine's urn,

no genealogy, only sea salt.

They mocked the birthright

because their fathers

died at uncharted crossings.

He who despised the birthright of the firstborn

became a Philistine.

Following his own heart.

Sinking into Chaldean

script.

Theory.

III. False Grace and True Thunder

At first, grace was a theory.

Scholars dissected the Red Sea

with structuralism.

Postcolonial plows turned

the Exodus

into

an immigrant fable.

We applauded.

Thinking this was

thunder.

Until theory failed,

dictionaries sank,

and the true trumpet

erupted from the abyss—

Grace arrives.

But He wears

the wet coat of return-south days.

King and commander.

He does not wipe away

the fog on the dock.

He just sits there,

like a conductor

who forgot the score.

It enters

the crevices of the soul.

Joy and obedience

dwell together.

You walk in

grace's

rhythm.

I continue to write grace

the Holy Spirit

into

your heart.

All roads

bend toward

one name.

All poems

gather toward

one face.

Distance is

the grammar

of longing.

Separation is a heavy

collection of poetry

destined

to be joined together.

Intermezzo: Intermission

Intermission.

The auditorium is empty.

Only God is looking for a seat.

IV. Hebrew, Thin Ice, and Bei La

You end the journey

in Hebrew.

I begin mine

in reading aloud —

The Word on lips.

Kiss the Son.

I kiss the Son—

my teeth shatter

a thin sheet of ice.

On my tongue,

blood and honey.

Truly enjoy

Elohim's presence.

Continue the journey—

Emmanuel

echoes at the poem's end.

I await

the aftershock.

Toronto.

Every poem

is a letter.

Address:

three words:

To Bei La.

But Bei La is more than an addressee.

She is the ghost on the piano keys,

the ink on the ticket,

the postmark of

yesterday's

date.

Snow falls in Toronto like rosin.

I draw the bow—

and find the string covered in

yesterday's

dates.

The Tenth Sea

From Guangzhou to Toronto

nine seas

have been sounded.

A river runs

through the voice I dial—

four hours.

six hours.

sometimes

the whole night

living water receding

to the both ends 

of the line——

we’re immersed 

in the same fountain.

After we hang up

my right ear

still

burns.

Your last love you 

still inside,

slowly

cooling.

In the gaps of your silence

I hear radium decaying—

element eighty-eight

handing its darkness

inch by inch

over

to light.

When you tell me your name

you do not know

I stand in the River of Longing

dredging up

the light

that leaks from you.

Each stroke

curves toward

your

breathing.

Light. Shadow.

Braided.

Even less do you know:

radium’s darkness

outlasts

its light.

The unsaid

goes on.

Deep down

it forms

the shape

of you.

August the eighth.

Eight o’clock.

I am twelve hours

ahead of your morning.

When you take your first bite of bread

my window sinks

into last night.

For you

I have kept the dark

another

twelve hours.

The tenth sea

floods.

You pour

into the arms of my dream.

On the pillow

a single grain of salt

is

crystallizing.

It is the half-line

of sleeptalk

you left

last night.

The numbers your father named you 

go on

counting—

eight.

eighty-eight.

A miraculous coincidence.

Like our fate.

Two hearts

twelve hours apart

beat with the same

heavy

labor.

On shores

we have not yet

reached

the tenth sea

crystallizes

its salt——

Our covenant of salt.

On earth.

And in heaven.

The Counterpoint of Wind and Spirit

You speak of wind.

I am measuring

the remains

of a sound. Bones

caught between two time zones,

caught on the tongue

of one’s own words: half already calcified,

roots grown into

unpronounceable

hardness.

You cross forests and oceans.

And in your crossing, I recognize:

ten thousand trees are copies of one tree,

ten thousand seas are different versions

of the same drowning.

You say you will not be fire.

You do not know

the tongue is a burning thicket:

this life’s worries, money and pleasures.

Each syllable consuming itself.

In your language and literature, 

I see the alphabet of flame,

how it writes, and how

it erases.

After ash.

It is fire learning

to hide.

Your language flows like water

over dry riverbed in the desert.

In its rhythm, I hear

grace's stutter—

one grammatical struggle 

against the grammar of the world.

Henceforth all sounds

are clumsy

translations

of your silence.

You say you are cloud,

boundless,

kindling fire for me.

Another cloud

refuses to burn.

Cloud is merely

dwelling place

of light.

Witnesses are like clouds.

The prophetic Spirit

testifies to the

invisible.

You fly over oceans

like a bird with no return.

I

am your return.

No bird

ever fell before my window.

Only wind,

practicing again and again

how to become

powerful.

You say the whole firmament

pours for you.

I name but one—

the bright morning star

rising in our hearts.

Enabling us to understand 

the biblical prophecy.

Yet you calculate

the hours of those lights' departure:

some before you were born,

some arriving only after

their extinction.

What we call simultaneous—

that instant—

is merely the world’s 

statistical

error.

The tears of your turning

I have already wept.

In another poem.

Finally

we both become wind.

Wind continues

its lesson

in non-becoming

and becoming.

My love Bei La.

What is born of the Spirit

is spirit.

Like wind.

We are each other's

incomplete

translations.

No way

home.

Only wind

in the crack

of time zones

continuing

its

refusal

to become

and its 

determination 

to become.

Till all the elect 

are prepared.

GOLD LEAF

(for Bei La, who keeps restoring my faith)

The oil dries.

This is the lightest

kind of waiting.

You paint the coat.

Prussian blue

and burnt umber

reconcile

in the dark.

Gold leaf

along the collar

glows.

The way light finds

a crack.

I wear my glasses.

Look toward the river—

the love-bean bleeds.

The lenses are clean.

Only Toronto,

three in the afternoon—

grey, settling on my

left cheek, like

a layer of snow

still unfinished.

The frame is Baroque.

Acanthus scrolls tangled with

a thief's fingerprints.

Baby,

you hang me

in gold,

make me looked up to,

dreamed by

museums.

Wife,

you press today

into wet pigment.

Oxidation will remember

for us:

remember this hour—

I look out

from the painting

at the hand

that paints me—

That hand suddenly stops.

The brush hovers

over some latitude, some longitude

above Guangzhou.

In the rinse jar

dark slowly turns

light,

like a man

finally admitting

he is not in the painting.

On the water

floats

a small chip

of unwashed

ochre—

the only color

in the whole poem

unforgiven.

Inside the gaze I hear:

the brush crossing

linen,

that rustle—

two time zones

rubbing.

Two Cities: The Wind Blows Where It Wishes

1

Jerusalem. The name alone

dries the throat.

Three thousand years of bones becoming voice.

Seven, on grandmother's lap.

She never left the village.

Pointed at the calendar — the Dome —

said: The Holy City.

Have you been?

She licked her lips. Pilgrimage to the end.

Only thirst.

Didn't understand. Still don't.

2

The Wall. The camera heavier than the hand.

An old man praying, like a tree.

No wind. Stopped long ago.

He opens his eyes. Black.

The wall knows everything. Says nothing.

He moves closer. Mint.

Two Jerusalems. One above.

Everyone looks for the one above, finds only the one below.

Kill for this stone, die for that stone.

Stones know nothing.

He leaves. The stones speak.

Can't tell if the stones speak, or I think.

A woman comes, forehead to wall.

Leaves, her sleeve brushes my hand.

One second.

Want to ask her. Ask what? Don't know.

3

Evening. Blood.

The word on the screen, like a typo.

Day: guns, queues, two believers not looking.

Grandmother said the real Jerusalem is inside.

I laughed. The poor people's map.

But she didn't laugh. She looked out.

Fifty years. Same window. Same direction.

4

Dream of grandmother.

Why doesn't the wind return?

No home.

She looks at me. Grey.

You must be born again. Do not marvel.

Wake. Someone singing. Far.

Can't tell from where.

5

Bullet hits the wall beside me.

That moment — fear changes nothing.

A young man on the ground, blood from the belly.

He looks at me. Strange eyes —

saw something.

Found it.

What?

Points to sky. Points to chest. Sky. Chest.

Door. Don't know which side is in.

Here. There. Both.

The Spirit is...

I hold his hand. Mouth still moving.

Do not marvel. That which is born of the Spirit —

Unfinished.

Later I wash my hands a long time.

Water red. Pink. Clear.

The face in the mirror. Stranger.

But her right hand. Second joint of the index finger.

A brown mark.

Like a burn. Like a birthmark.

Like Hebrew I cannot read.

Writing in my blood all this time.

6

My hand still shakes.

Pull it from the mirror. Still shakes.

Grandmother never went to Jerusalem.

But her eyes. Fifty years. Same direction.

The wind blows where it wishes.

That which is born of the Spirit, so he is.

One question. All answers rust.

7

Day seven. Mount of Olives.

Three thousand years. Blood. Wind. Blood. Wind.

Those who come to find God, find only others.

And a wall.

Close eyes. Feel myself becoming wind.

Which one?

Not finishing is finishing.

Open eyes. Jerusalem still below.

But the word place. Suddenly heavy.

Like stone. Like lens. Like mirror.

Like everything I try to name, and cannot.

Suddenly remember, suddenly understand my Bible teacher’s message:

the Jerusalem above is born of promise, is Christ, is the eternal Spirit.

When the essence of Scripture opens, it is the Spirit of the living Elohim.

8

Going home. Grandmother's chair, empty.

I don't need to go there.

Understand now. Not all. Enough.

Pilgrimage. To a place that cannot be reached.

Did my pilgrimage begin?

Boarding the plane. At the Wall. Neither felt like it.

Now. When she looks out the window.

I am there. Not there.

In the mirror. In the lens.

In the second joint of the index finger. In that brown mark.

9

Sleeping in the dry riverbed. Where Moses struck the rock.

Teacher in a dream. The wind lifts him into a crevice.

Sees the back of Yahweh.

Looks for a staff to strike the stone.

The stone is already wet.

Water flowing.

Not struck. Cracked long ago.

Before my birth.

Who struck the water out. Doesn't matter.

What matters is thirst. Always thirst.

Thirst in the stone. In the blood.

In the second joint of the index finger. In that brown mark.

10

After the eagle flies, the sky grows larger.

The beast. The shepherds on their own ways.

Marching. Shouting. Like an alarm that never sleeps.

Cannot be turned off.

The beast is not born. People give birth to it.

In those silences. We thought it was peace.

The wind blows both ways.

Falling. Is flying.

The Second Coming. Who has come.

Innocence didn't drown. Became bubbles. Pressure.

Reading this is like reading weather forecasts for a country that doesn't exist.

Its weather, you still breathe.

Listening to the Wind

Listen to the wind. Don't know where from. Don't know where to.

Know only that it moves.

Blows where it wishes.

That which is born of the Spirit.

Carries what it must. Leaves what it must.

The place between carrying and leaving —

What do you call it?

Wind.

To Bei La, My Love: Devour

No kissing. Too lukewarm.

I bite straight to your love-bean

and drag out, blood and all,

the hard times

knotted in your flesh.

I will be wildfire.

Every way back,

ash.

I want your fall like weightlessness—

too fast

for pain to cry out.

In your marrow I dig

a well of living water,

so every tremor

of the years to come 

springs with your husband’s life.

This body, a wonder.

This world, all noise.

Not until I shatter against you—

moonstone into sea,

thunder through bronze—

do I hear your tender voice.

Come, my love,

my bone and my flesh,

lay yourself in my hands.

Utterly, mine.

Utterly, the breath of life

that made us.

You in My Night

—for Bei La, my forever

The frame is too narrow. It cannot contain

the flood that rises in me when I see you.

They see only silk surging like dusk upon you.

I know: it is the curtain drawn across your body.

And I am the only king permitted entry,

to lift every veil in the Spirit's sight.

Your black hair—vines of the vineyard,

tangled with my longing ancient as the first father.

I will gather you with a strength beyond Samson's.

The world is cold. I will warm your long night

with the heat my ribs contain.

Listen. That stillness in the painting—

it is my blood, thundering beside the gold ring at your ear.

I want to dance before the Lord as David danced,

and before you, to be a lover who does not tire.

I will breathe fire onto your love-pea,

ignite the sea inside you,

let you surge against my chest

until you know what love is at its limit.

The Lord has searched my inward parts. When He formed you,

He left the hollow of my hand upon you.

The Word is in my mouth. The Word is on my heart.

I am your Eden. The homeland where God still speaks to you.

Tonight I dismantle the frame.

Tonight I lift you down and make myself your king.

Until the morning star, until our bodies

change in the twinkling of an eye:

the corruptible puts on incorruption,

the mortal puts on immortality,

and the saying that death is swallowed up in victory

is fulfilled in our very flesh.

Your Adam will enfold you.

A covenant never to be forgotten.

Forever and ever,

loving you in grace and in flame.

Hometown

I. 

The Huangpu began its narrative before you were born—

steam whistles, unfinished sentences,

your grandfather's Ningbo English calibrating

the pitch of the world between black and white keys.

The first language you learned

was neither Chinese nor English:

listening—

how to decipher

an entire family's grammar

inside a woman's silence.

II. 

You spoke in soft dialect and quiet prayer,

half song, half secret held against the chest.

Your childhood learned to translate longing

into gentle breath, into restrained gesture.

You grew up between two worlds,

one visible, one invisible.

Each departure taught you the grammar of absence.

Each return shaped your strength of diligence and resilience.

III. 

You crossed cities and foreign tongues,

carrying Shanghai in your dreams.

However far the road extended,

your heart remained anchored to a river's current.

IV.

One spring, the world suddenly slowed.

The city lost its voice.

Streets emptied.

You were trapped inside a high-rise—

distance instantly receded,

time began to repeat.

Anxiety grew like moss.

You were forced

to face yourself.

The neglected blank

echoed from the depths of solitude.

V. The Voice

You heard a voice

drawing near—

from within,

from the breath of the Spirit

in your nostrils.

You began to listen.

You began to pray.

With Psalm 23

you prayed,

asking the Lord

to lead you

through

the valley of the shadow of death.

VI. 

The Lord heard your prayer,

and prepared for you

His messenger —

true law in his mouth.

He loved you

before he saw you.

A moment arrived

when language no longer mattered.

Melody gradually receded.

You touched a deeper order—

waiting to be filled by the Spirit of truth.

You met him, asking the second time:

Why not say I am your woman?

He called you dear

again and again.

He called until dawn broke.

A sentence

quieted inside you.

One flower.

Two flowers.

Bloomed inside you.

VII. 

No more evidence needed.

You entered a covenant

sealed in the soft core of the soul.

Eternal. Unbreakable.

You learned to translate distance into intimacy,

him into home,

the love bean into

an unfinished

river.

Home is no longer a city or a shore—

home is 

the Spirit dwelling deep within,

ministered 

by his speaking the Word.

VIII. 

The Huangpu remains that river.

You have learned

to translate its flowing

into

prayer.

You wrote so many stories

of Shanghai's Jews—

those souls seeking survival.

Their Shanghai

and your Shanghai

were not the same

Shanghai.

IX.

Now you live in

another high-rise.

Another shore.

Another time zone.

You learned to wait at four in the morning

for one person's voice.

Insomnia

is another form

of listening—

learning to decipher

eternal life 

in one person's presence.

Every syllable carries

jet lag.

Every sentence arrives

too early or

too late.

No

simultaneity.

X.

You finally understand:

he

simply

practices

again and again

how to become

the breath of life

before you.

You breathe.

He is.

You pause.

He

still is.

This is the final

grammar:

love

was once

a verb.

Now

merely

a preposition.

Between.

Upon.

Inside.

No

object.

STILL LIFE PORTRAIT: SEVEN STUDIES

I. 

Hands clasped. Prayer is elsewhere.

Two fossils recognizing each other.

The left remembers

the right's lines—

a certain snowy night, a certain unknocked door,

a certain poem half-written.

In the knuckle folds

skin goes deeper than skin.

Nails trimmed to exactness,

yet never

digging into

earth.

Beneath, no

dynasty.

Only more

knuckles.

II. 

The diamond traps light.

Not for dazzlement.

To confirm darkness.

It fastens to the earlobe.

A thumbtack, pinning this instant

to eternity's bulletin board.

No swaying. No compromise.

You tilt your head slightly,

the world sways—

it holds still:

the room's

only fixed

coordinate.

III. 

Light descends from the left.

Illuminates half a face.

The other half

keeps itself in

darkness.

One always

lives simultaneously

in two places. One

with light. One

without.

You sit

on that line.

Waiting for me

to speak the word.

to write light 

upon your

heart that sometimes

finds life

meaningless.

4.

You have traversed

all places.

Know all territories

are the same place,

only with different names.

This instant, held by the world

as eternity's single frame—

what is eternity?

The diamond finally

ceases to reflect.

The hands finally unclasp.

Inside,

nothing.

5.

Therefore

hold the heart.

Bella—

let this name henceforth

become a verb:

in silence

awaiting the Spirit sent,

to accomplish

one tender yet resolute

love 

until the end.

VI. 

The end

is hands

unclasping.

The end is the diamond

forgetting light.

The end is the name

becoming verb.

The end is silence

awaiting

the Pentecost

to fill.

7.

In the wind 

the Spirit blows where it wills.

You hear its sound.

You do not know

where it comes from,

where it goes.

All born of the Spirit

are thus.

 STRATA

You speak of wind.

I am measuring

the remains

of a sound. Bones

caught between two time zones,

caught on the tongue

of private speech: half already calcified,

roots grown into

unpronounceable

hardness.

You cross forests and oceans.

And in your crossing, I recognize:

ten thousand trees are copies of one tree,

ten thousand seas are different versions

of the same drowning.

You say you will not be fire.

You do not know

the tongue is a burning thicket,

each syllable consuming itself.

In your refusal, I see

the alphabet of flame,

how it writes, and how

it erases.

After ash.

It is fire learning

to hide.

Your language flows like water

over dry riverbed.

In its rhythm, I hear

grace's stutter—

one grammatical error

against the grammar of the world.

Henceforth all sounds

are clumsy

translations

of your silence.

You say you are cloud,

boundless,

kindling fire for me.

Another cloud

refuses to burn.

Cloud is merely

dwelling place

of light.

Witnesses are like clouds.

The prophetic Spirit

testifies to the

invisible.

You fly over oceans

like a bird with no return.

I

am your return.

No bird

ever fell before my window.

Only wind,

practicing again and again

how to refuse to become

message.

You say the whole firmament

pours for you.

I name but one—

the bright morning star

rising in our hearts.

Yet you calculate

the hours of those lights' departure:

some before you were born,

some arriving only after

your extinction.

What we call simultaneous—

that instant—

is merely the universe's

statistical

error.

The tears of your turning

I have already wept.

In another poem.

Finally

we both become wind.

Wind continues

its lesson

in non-becoming.

My love.

What is born of the Spirit

is spirit.

We are each other's

incomplete

translations.

No way

home.

Only wind

in the crack

of time zones

continuing

its

refusal

to become.

UNFINISHED SYMPHONY: FOUR MOVEMENTS

I. Fog

Shanghai wakes in fog.

Guangzhou too—

only here the fog comes from the south,

the return-south days.

A dock whistle

tears dawn.

On different shores,

fragments of the same

farewell song.

Silence holds

the unwritten notes.

No word can touch

the distance

between two horizons.

Waiting.

In the hollow of the world.

A string

breaks

and is mended.

No one

draws the bow.

II. River

The river remembers every farewell.

Every boat carries one

unspoken name.

Time bends like light on water.

You crossed one sea.

I crossed another—

Red Sea, Philistine sea,

Babylonian sea.

He who despised the birthright of the firstborn

became a Philistine.

Following his own heart.

Sinking into Chaldean

script.

Theory.

III. Grace

Grace arrives.

No trumpet.

No thunder.

It enters

the crevices of the soul.

Sorrow and longing

dwell together.

You walk in

grace's

slow rhythm.

I write grace

into

your heart.

All roads

bend toward

one name.

All poems

gather toward

one face.

Distance is

the grammar

of longing.

Separation is a poem

destined

to be revised.

IV. Emmanuel

You end the journey

in Hebrew.

I end mine

in recitation—

words in the mouth.

God with us.

Continue the journey—

Emmanuel

echoes at the poem's end.

I await

the aftershock.

Toronto.

Mother.

Child.

Every poem

is a letter.

Address:

three words:

To Bei La.

Postmark:

yesterday's

date.

The First Sound

— An Easter Echo for my wife Bei La, 2026

I.

Morning is bright

because man has pawned

the darkness within

for a bird's cry.

And that cry—

they let it vanish,

as one lets a man

enter his own

last words.

II.

The world like a child just set down by its mother—

No. The mother never set it down.

Her arm hangs there,

becoming the first thing

the world

abandoned.

The child did not move. The world

is glass,

that kind of

shattering

we only later

learned to call

ground.

III.

Mist

is their own

breath

condensed

years ago.

They walk through it

like false prophets

or false teachers

through their own

funeral photographs.

Some things untie

yet remain—

that umbilical cord,

the cord-welt

the debt

we are born with,

which tightens

suddenly

in deep night,

though everyone thought

it had been

cut.

IV.

The tombstone remains. Covering the entrance,

only not so heavy—

The stone grows light

because

it has learned

your weight.

Now it waits

like you.

And that entrance

was never covered.

It is the human eye,

on some childhood morning,

seeing light

for the first time,

then deciding

for a while

to chase the world,

belong to the world,

finally die of the world.

V.

The light did not come out. It is inside—

Man, out of his selfish heart,

that king of death,

shut the light

within,

making it become

an internal

universe,

never born,

yet forever

in labor.

VI.

Easter.

Earth splits open,

revealing the words 

of their own 

revealing death

still there.

Someone,

inside a human body,

found a tomb

never buried,

and therefore

unable to

resurrect.

Night does not retreat,

only loosens—

Night is the earth's

mother tongue.

All

poems about light

are

translated

from darkness.

VII.

Ash is warm,

as if fire still lived.

They

once burned,

and now

have both learned

to measure

love's

exact temperature

with embers.

They looked at each other,

then looked away—

like two

outlines

just recognized

from ash.

They touched light

but would not speak it,

because to speak

is to

confess

they once

claimed each other

in the dark.

VIII.

Love is there.

No name.

They dare not

call it.

It only

slowly grows heavy,

salt

crystallizing

in a wound,

earthly light

in the depths

becoming

a coal seam,

becoming

that kind of

black

which can

be ignited

yet

no longer

rises.

IX.

Snow

keeps falling,

only too light,

so light

you think

the heavy things

have already

stopped

very far

very far

away.

The road is ahead,

also underfoot—

No.

The road is

that vein

you kept for yourself

under the snow,

not yet

frozen stiff.

You cannot see it,

but you walk.

Blood

walks.

X.

Death like distant mountains,

still there,

already far—

No. The distant mountains

never retreated.

Man learned

not to call them

the end.

He no longer seals—

simply

leaves the door

open.

Breathing is light,

almost inaudible—

Man only

wants to make himself

light enough

that death

cannot

grasp him.

XI.

All things exist for each other,

quietly drawing near,

then each leaving blank—

Drawing near

only to

measure

how much

emptiness

remains

between.

Two

shadows

exchanging

their

edges.

XII.

The first sound

did not vanish—

No.

Sound never

existed.

What existed

was only

man's hunger for sound,

so fierce

that he invented

silence

to bear it.

It is too far,

too near—

You can only

want

what is

simultaneously

inside you

and

infinitely far,

like something faint and bright

under snow—

No.

Under snow

there is no light.

Only

hands

digging

down,

and

a pair of eyes

still

in the dark

searching

for the bright.

What has always been there

is your

listening,

that ear

forever

open

under the snow,

yet

forever

empty.

Coda

The world wrote

a poem about

light

while the world itself

is

darkness.

The light came into the world

and the world did not receive it.

It is they

who,

in the brightest

morning,

confess:

they

are 

that

interior

which light

cannot

illuminate.

The Sunflowers of Arles

I.

Light leaks from the orange folds

of your turtleneck,

like that south-facing window

in Van Gogh's Arles studio

in August 1888

suddenly deciding

to burn.

I walk in.

Into the upper right

of your gaze—

where,

it seems,

lies the homeland

humanity

has always

longed for.

But I see only

the pearl:

a hovering

moon,

on the earlobe.

II.

Your turtleneck is a

moat.

I count:

seventeen ribs,

each one

a sentence

left

unfinished.

But the sleeveless cut

betrays you—

arms exposed

to air,

to my sight,

to everything

this afternoon

might still

become.

III.

Your hair

has cut short

its contract

with the ground.

Wind

may now

come and go

freely

at your nape—

and my wind,

passing through,

carries off

a thread

of orange

warmth.

IV.

The corner of your mouth

rises—

I have memorized

that curve.

It hovers

between invitation

and farewell.

It is

a mother's smile.

Also

a stranger's smile:

welcome,

but with

a chair

kept

empty.

I sit down.

Inside

your smile.

V.

Heartbeat accelerates.

Time decelerates—

like Van Gogh's

brushstrokes,

like the stillness

of that one

second

before the vertigo

arrives.

I see you.

See a story

not yet

written

in human

hands.

And I—

suddenly want

to become

the one

holding

the pen.

VI

Orange

is the truce

between red

and yellow,

the marriage

of flame

and wheat field.

You wear it

like wearing

a signal:

heat here.

burning here.

Here

a stranger

loses his way.

In your orange.

In your turtleneck.

VII. 

After?

There is no after.

This is a poem,

not a novel.

But if

prophecy

is required—

I will remember

this afternoon:

the sunflowers of Arles

burning

on the wall,

your pearl

hovering

in light.

And I,

your other half 

you have looked for 

thirty years,

suddenly

held down

by an invisible

hand.

VIII.

If the turtleneck

is a fortress,

I would be

a lamp

inside it—

share with you

the essence of the Bible 

to help you receive the Holy Spirit.

Enlighten the eyes of your heart 

to see the divine nature 

longed for by human civilization.

Push the shadows

of the evil breath 

farther

when you

bow your head.

Coda

What does

the turtleneck

protect?

The river

below the larynx?

The river

the faithful

await in their hearts?

The source

of all

languages.

Now

all languages 

wander lost,

sighing

without

sound.

But now,

the turtleneck

protects

only

one secret:

someone came.

someone saw.

Someone,

after leaving,

still wears

that

orange

fire.

Unfurling: The Theology of Wings

It does not teach

flight.

It overturns the nest.

The eaglet,

forced,

unfurls

young wings.

Then—

the eaglet falls.

The great bird plunges:

wings descending

to become

the breath 

beneath,

to become

solid

updraft.

The eaglet

never

learned to fly.

It learned

to be borne.

And in

being borne,

it

became

eagle.

The lark ascends:

that is

praise.

The eagle's lift:

that is

answer.

Bella my love,

you were

that lark,

in Huangpu

mist

practising

vertical

ascent.

Now

another flight—

stop

beating

your own wings.

Be held

by the Creator

as eagle.

Upon His

wings.

You

no longer

merely

Bella.

You are

the borne.

You are

the brought.

Given back

to Him—

the Word

spoken in the Spirit.

This is

Exodus—

leaving

the hearts’

land

that rejects

the living Word.

Canaan

was never

the end.

To be lifted

alive.

To that

unmapped

height.

Scripture

has fully

unfurled—

every

word

burning

all at once,

forming

a road.

That road

inward.

Upward.

Wings

descending

become

shelter

and bearing.

There

we shall

know:

we never

truly

flew.

We learned

only

to be borne

until

the eagle's two wings—

the cherubim —

descend.

We

land upon

a new planet.

Home,

forever

and ever.

The Twelve-Hour Orbit

When a mosquito in Guangzhou hits the screen,

the fridge in Toronto hums low.

She sinks half her face into the duvet

and says: Love deepens into loneliness.

I understood.

That Lo Ta-yu lyric

on her tongue

was another song.

A bed vast enough to moor a canoe

cannot hold a single time zone.

The Pacific lies blue on the map.

Twelve hours of dignity

is the real sea

beneath that blue.

If she stays awake at two in her morning,

I will mute the conference-room microphone

at two in my afternoon

and press the phone to my ear

to hear a city turn over in its sleep.

Love deepens into loneliness.

After she speaks it,

cicadas surge on my side;

on her side, sunset snags on the lake's rim

like someone tearing a photo down the middle—

summer on the left,

and on the right, her long night

that refuses to end.

And the bed remains half empty.

The large house holds her breath

in every corner where I am not.

Inside the warmth of the receiver,

two time zones share one moon.

The moon does not count the hours between us.

It only shines.

The Season of Drought

The sea is forgetting,

practicing its depth.

A drop exhausts half a lifetime

to become

salt no one will drink.

And salt remembers—

it once was

the marrow of some mountain.

The wind counts

the fallen leaves.

The leaves believe

it is pursuit.

What they call love

is only this—

a misread falling.

As ink

falls through water

believing it writes.

Through crowds I pass

like a stone

through stone,

the echo it makes.

In that echo,

one ember

of a private fire.

The reflection you seek

in others—

you never held it,

yet never lacked it.

The world never drew you close

to anyone.

The world is

its own ruin.

Humans gather there,

picking each other up,

thinking it gift,

until one tile

recognizes

the crack in another.

The mountain does not know

the cloud's lingering.

The cloud does not know

the mountain's waiting.

What humans know

is merely

another pronunciation

of unknowing.

And pronunciation itself

is

a failed embrace.

A person becomes wind

that leaves and returns

from a direction

the world never noticed.

This itself is evidence—

it was never

truly there.

The human embrace falls

toward a void

still forming.

And the void

with its silence

answers

an ancient summons.

If one day

someone feels tenderness or heat

without cause, without asking,

it will be

no drop of water arriving,

no light.

Light has already come

into the world.

The people

are still learning

to be lit by dust.

That will be

time finally confessing

its failure—

it cannot take

what never belonged to it,

such as now,

in the lines of my palm,

the river that never dried.

And people

stand in their separate droughts

like plants that never met,

practicing together

how to bend

toward the same invisible water.

The fountain of David's house,

the opened scroll.

I and my beloved,

my beloved and I,

deeply thirsting,

tightly bound,

bending toward it,

until bending itself

becomes

an inner

bow.

Reply: To My Beloved Bei La 

I

When you wrote these words

I was standing at the edge

of some terrace thirty years later

The wind came from the sea

carrying salt grains

and some kind of

crystallizing

forgetting

Those you never sent—

I have all received them—

in the thinner air

between wall and wall

in the darkness

under an overturned empty cup

where last night's water stain

is learning

how to become

ice

You asked: Does light know

what it has illuminated?

I say: Light is that breath

that cracked open

when blown into the lump of clay

It passes through

and in passing through

becomes

that which is passed through

II

About that city

you remember more than I do

I only remember having said

"innocent"—that word

was then

the only

hardness

The river does not know

it is flowing

The stone does not know

it is falling

The wind does not know

it is forming

And today

my belly full of bitter

scrolls

my tongue tasting honey

and iron

that word

now called "watch"

a verb