Psalm For Jing Wei

As hands toss back the bedsheets
and feet touch the cement floor,
you become the room's weight
pulled by the light of chrome
and glass, --- everyting expensive,
everything new.

You have crossed over to this world
of skyscrapers and Buicks
shining jet black on the pavillion square.

Years ago your bones
were floating lines that defined
the body's skin hanging taut, silken
before Budda's eye, parchment
on which the day wrote its simple experience.

He remembers the girl who rode
her bicycle home from school,
snapped beans then cherry twigs
into baskets to prepare the meal's
evening food and flame.

Later, she knelt outside washing
her hair beneath a bamboo faucet
and dragged it along the garden stones
so the wind could dry it while the moon

looked on, an owl's face
that loomed through some clouds.
knowing change could sprawl
as a sweet yet poisonous bloom.

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The beautiful artwork is by artist, Jia Lu.