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Yuan Changming


Cityscape

Golden teeth glistening 
In the mouth of the city
Silver clouds colliding  
At the tongue tip of day

Bite off all darkness
They whisper
And chew the season well.

On Another Rainy Day: for Liu Yu

It rains a lot in Vancouver 
Often does this rain remind me of
The days when you sojourned here 
With my family, after Father left all of us

While walking in the rain, you would 
Recall, under my big umbrella
How you once waited in a drizzle 
With me in a broken basket on your back
To cross the widening river, not far
From our village when I was crying hard 
For a large spoonful of flour soup (you were too
Weak and too hungry to produce any milk)

Seeing you do nothing about my hunger 
The ferry man asked, Where is its mom?
I am his mother! You replied, tears rolling down
With the raindrops on your childish face
How old are you then? – Almost 17.

It is raining again in Vancouver, and beyond this rain 
Your voice echoes aloud on the other side of this world

Natural Confrontations

Crow

A baby raven
Popping up from nowhere
Tries to
Establish itself: 
one dark truth
On the skeletal tree top
Yawing fiercely
Towards the sky, the wind, the buildings
The fields and the entire afternoon
All so fluffily white
In jade-toned snow

Bamboo  

From under 
A bulky boulder
Sitting still, meditating 
Like a Buddha 
A tiny bamboo sprout
Has just broken the earth 
Ready to shoot up
Against the entire sky

Cloud

Your body so light
Soft, short, never
Even having a fixed shape
Yet you resist the strongest 
Summer sun, trying to 
Shield every ray it shoots down
Towards the huge empire  
Getting increasing hot on earth

Picture


​Yuan Changming's Profile

Beyond the Blue: A Parallel Poem

there is no borderline 
between sea and sky 

waves are pushing their colors 
up towards the air, bloating 
their calls and songs to bold 
changing shapes 

it is a world within nature 
presenting itself, or what 
cannot be represented elsewhere 

separated from the mind 
the frame always trying to capture 
a few fish swimming in the waters-


Dytiscus Larvae: a Tragicomedy of Nature

One most ferocious robber in the pond
World, observes a zoologist, is a slim,
Streamlined insect called the Dytiscus larvae:
Lying in ambush on a water grass
He suddenly shoots at lightning speed
To his prey (or anything moving or smelling
Of ‘animal’ in any way, a fat tadpole, for 
Instance), darts underneath it, then quickly
Jerks up his head, grabs it in his jaws
Injects his poisonous glandular secretion into it
Dissolves its entire inside into a liquid soup
And sucks as it swells up first, and then gradually 
Shrinks to a limp bundle of skin until it finally falls 
From his fatal kiss. Very few animals

According to the observer
Even when starved to death would attack
Let alone eat an equal-sized animal
Of their own species

But the Dytiscus does, just as man does  
Within or without a pond

Would/Wouldn't: The Variations of the Wing

If every human had a pair of wings
(Made of strong muscles and broad feathers
Rather than wax like Icarus’)
Who wouldn’t jump high or become eager to fly
Either towards the setting sun
Or against the rising wind? 

Who wouldn’t migrate afar with sunshine
And glide most straight to a warmer spot
In the open space? Indeed 

Who would continue to confine himself
Within the thick walls of a small rented room?

Who would willingly take a detour
Bump into a stranger, or stumble down
Along the way? More important 

Who would remain fixed here
At the same corner all her life
Like a rotten stump, hopeless 
Of a new green growth?

Comments?

***

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