Reading Li Po after three days of rain
January 8, 2001
You ride the waters of our home
though you sail ten thousand miles.
Li Po
Facing the family tree,
a blue spruce planted
eleven Christmases ago,
its shadow falls over me,
a patchwork of wet darkness
the size of the Yeh River;
how it trembles across
its valleyed bed, my face,
rippling like water drops
over the fishing cormorants,
their beautiful black wings
which never dry in Xian heat.
(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Publishing Society