Zen Garden

In the center of a city
burning with the midday sun,

a garden,
a strange drop of calm

nourished my love and me,
sheltered us from the reach of chaos.

Lotus blossoms guarded silence,
only allowing dragonflies to whir through the emptiness.

Spiders spun their fragile dreams
as we wove our own through each other's fingers.

The pagoda alone heard us free our thoughts,
let them slip through flowered lips.

Shimmering koi watched them
course down the waterfalls and over stones,

swam beside them, a series of unbroken days
and promises not yet spoken.

October, 2007

Adopted

I was small
when we left Korea,
the homeland
that only remembers me
as its acquaintance
and not as its child.
Memories
drift from forgotten places,
fan out before me
when I least expect them.

Fragrances remind me
of the pungent smell
of kimchi in  pots
large enough to carry
small oceans,
or of gardens tended by women
on clay rooftops,
color bursting forth
as blossoms reached for the sun.

The homeless men downtown
wear the same eyes as street mermaids:
men whose legs
were encased in large rubber bags,
as they drug themselves
along seas of black pavement,
singing mournfully,
sirens tempting men
to give up their gold.

Some days, the memories
come in flashes:
photographs
whose edges faded
with time.

There's a bar of
green soap,
an old Korean woman
washing me, chattering,
even though I don't understand.

Maybe she was scouring her own memories.

July, 2008