My Picture: Taken on Christmas Day, Xinxiang , China
Bai Juyi’s Dream
China
Dark Times
My picture
In a dark time,the mind plays tricks.
I end up meeting shadows
deep in the shade.
Outside is like a quite graveyard,
a cold breeze and an end.
The ragged moon competes for attention.
With a tearless night, abject and mute
and patched by indifference.
A few stars, not dimmed and dark yet.
Offer to enlarge the circle of light,
and silent friends meeting.
Meeting Wang Wei by the river
My Picture: Taken today on my Christmas Walk…
On this Christmas Day,
I walked in Lesau Park.
And read Wang Wei and Sun Di.
The mist along the river fixed
it lazy gaze, on the old fishermen
from the old places.
I talked with a couple,
who offered Baijiu and sweet potatoes.
We talked about the drowning soul,
and how the weeping willow
tree still bears witness.
As I crossed the river,
I saw a veiled mist
encroaching with sadness once again.
And who would choose not to inquire,
to see the grief for one more time.
So half coming back,
I hurried home.
To a sigh and an echo passing by.
Christmas Eve
My Picture: Words have magic….
A messenger delivers
and everything I feel.
Big stories, with small bottom lines.
The quite boy with the simple smile.
He never knows what to say
to his mother, who is never satisfied.
The girl with the straight ‘A’s
who does not want to be a doctor,
and hides a dark family secret.
The old man hiding the pain
and fire inside,
consumed by ill-fate and
dragging himself from day-to-day.
A woman who told me
her husband had not kissed
her for eight years…….She
was beautiful.
A cautious loner
who once was a king.
Now he drinks each day,
and shouts at the moon.
Everybody’s searching for them,
everybody’s consumed by them
…and my story?
My eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul….
Sailing on the yellow river
My Picture: I held a small Christmas Party tonight….a gift from a students mother….
Before the winter fire
and shrill midnight cries.
I craved nothing.
Then the hunters silence
and fickle friends leaving,
surrounded my bones.
At the brink
an unseen bird sang
from the tree shadow.
I knew then of the road
not yet taken,
and some of the silence is me.
Winter solstice
http://www.theepochtimes.com: Winter Solstice in China today.
When awake in the dark mornings,
a heart pounding and star frost outside.
I think of the sun, now turned away.
A vague mood momentarily out of shape
and living fast.
Each light stings and spins,
trying to rebalance the
the dark and light at the same time.
One continuous line dragging
each damp filled day from morning to dusk.
The hope…..
that light will return,
once more eager for sensation and meaning.
A pearl veil of day….with a laughing soul.
The language of medicine
My Picture: The end of the flowers…..
It’s windy in the courtyard,
but I can still hear
the chatter of the hour glass people.
A decade of things past,
like a winter night’s dream.
But a few aged words
will see me through the night,
and the world cloaked in moonlight frost.
When sadness comes
My picture: Coffee, cake and Haiku…an evening in Xinxiang, China.
A chill wind today,
a curlew’s cry.
A whole day spent
in a spiders life.
Stone before stone
without a full stop.
A bare twig floats,
that tells the story again.
A Christmas dream time,
….. what light there is.
Winter Music
My Picture: Central Park. Xinxiang. Henan Province, China.
In deep winter, it is easy to be lost.
The uneven edges of life,
exposed by the cold hurried snow
leave little space between the stars.
Only the counted poems seem to matter.
I can envision loves, deep night
and the shapeliness
of lines borrowed from the past.
These lines of verse,
taut and unrepentant
offer the sun to my bones.
And the snow gathers on….
Fragments No 2
My Picture: Xinxiang Medical University: Henan Province, China.
A Wandering Poet 