When you have gone,

I shall drink only aged tea

Grown wild and crafted with careful intent.

I make my first cup but forget,

Lost in thoughts of you warm beside me.

The tea forgives my lapse of attention,

Made from leaves that hold the thread of time.

I cradle the warm cup in my hands along with my grief,

Each sip tasting of dark earth and rich love.

Do not go just yet.

Not yet. I am not ready.

Everyone was watching the fireworks.

Multicolored bursts that sparkled the sky.

I was watching the moon.

A reproachful orb burdened by eons of witness.

Our lives pass in an instant,

So we take such joys where we can.

A silvery road appeared before me.

I looked back at the gathering and listened,

The rockets booming over threads of conversation.

Silently I set my journey and stepped

Onto the shimmering invitation.

Would my heart follow?

Small matter. It was not ever mine,

But only borrowed.

I approach the door of the sky.

I knock but it does not open. It is closed.

Like your heart. Like my eyes. Like any sense of hope.

The clouds deny its existence, as I cry out for it to stay.

I fall and hit the ground, only to see the door above me, opened.

My bitter tears form a river

And all below is washed away.

Outside it is hot.

But not like the heat I remember

From childhood when I lived in another place.

There the air would hang still and expectant,

As if waiting for cooling winds which never arrived.

When you tried to breathe,

Each breath would coat your mouth with sticky warmth,

As if trying to inhale a sweltering blanket.

You would hear repeated as a mantra of protection

It’s not the heat but the humidity!

We all knew it to be a lie but said it nonetheless,

As though from our lips to some deity’s ears

Would cause pity to result in an icy breeze.

And after the temperature reached a certain point,

We would not care which deity answered.

I think if any passing demon had promised the equivalent of airy AC,

Everyone would have agreed and offered their souls on the spot.

But this is not that place, and I am not sorry.

I can still go outside in the late afternoon

Without soaking myself in my own sweat

Or worry about heatstroke from checking the mail.

I’ll stay in the mountains.

In futile effort, he bent his back into a rounded shape of a turtle,

Imagining it hard as that shell hiding all he loved.

But it was not, and he cried out in grief, collapsing under the weight of loss.

He realized at last that to hold back tears is to hold back time.

He could do neither, and it crushed him.

Fire is burning around me.

The air vanishes, consumed by smoke.

The very ground crumbles beneath the heat.

I sit calmly in the early hours,

Gazing into the morning mists.

I sip a cup of tea as I read Ha Jin.

Which of these is real?

Both. Neither. One. The other.

See what you want.

I will not choose for you.

Listening is an art I wish to learn.

To hear beneath the words of others the flow of their life

And what they hold within that rhythm.

But also to float on the surface of their meaning

And catch the gleams of significance thereupon.

Will this knowledge startle my mind

Enough to kindle new understanding?

When we sit together in silence,

Will the unspoken conversation continue?

A susurration from our common heart

With no bruit to indicate disease?

Yes. I hope. Yes.

In each fist I hold a stone.

I open my left hand and let the stone drop.

It is white but in its descent

Turns three times, changing to black.

I open my right hand and let the stone drop.

It is black but in its descent

Turns naught, remaining black.

Before they strike the ground, each transforms into a bird.

The left stone a raven, the right stone a dove.

The raven is the color of sunlight.

The dove is the color of the midnight sky.

Each flies to alight on my face; each plucks out an eye.

Having been Cassandra, I now walk as Tiresias.

Though I had never struck serpents

Nor foolishly judged a heavenly duel

Nor even glimpsed an owl unfeathered,

I am blinded and transformed

Yet still possess the unfortunate gift granted me originally:

I speak true words but am not heeded,

My voice lost beneath the mocking laughter from the sky.

This is not my heart only

It is yours and yours and yours

The sighing rhythm of the world interrupted

The anguished catch in a singer’s wail

The mournful drone of a cello’s tuning

I do not nor ever would keep these hidden

I throw them out to join the circulatory swirl

Let you hear what I hear

For I have heard your voices also

With every joy every sorrow every soaring song

Echoing in my dreams and we are never alone

The rain on the grass the wind in the leaves

We raise our heads to the sky for a glimpse of the sun

The beat the ebb the flow the beat the ebb the flow

On and on and on in us all

I take these things

Rays of forgotten laughter entangled in skyward branches

Glints of ancient tears enrobed in half-trodden rocks

Shines of discarded prayers ensnared in hidden eyries

I place them in the chambers of my charred heart

Blackened from use as a philosopher’s stone

(You see or perhaps you never know that)

I am the maker of fireflies

I travel unnoticed on crowded streets and abandoned alleyways

Dispensing these to land in worried eyes on wearied shoulders

(This being everyone I pass)

So when you suddenly stop in wonder at a beloved smile

Or lift yourself with a stranger’s aid

Know that I walked by

(in every age someone does this

As fireflies are essential)