The Glass Constellation. Arthur Sze

woman undergoing radiation treatment

      who stretches out on a bed to rest

      and senses she is stretching out to die?

      At night I listen to your breathing,

      guess at the freckles on your arms,

      smell your hair at the back of your neck.

      Tiger lilies are budding in pots in the patio;

      daikon is growing deep in the garden.

      I see a bewildered man ask for direction,

      and a daikon picker points the way with a daikon.

      5

      He threw Duration;

      sunspots;

      what is it like to catch up to light?

      a collapsing vertebra;

      the folding wings of a blue damselfly;

      receiving a fax;

      buffeted on a floatplane between islands;

      a peregrine falcon making a slow circle with outstretched wings;

      he crumpled papers, threw them on the floor,

      called it City of Bums;

      polar aligning;

      inhaling the smell of her hair;

      a red handprint on a sandstone wall;

      digging up ginseng;

      carding wool;

      where does matter end and space begin?

      6

      Mushroom hunting at the ski basin, I spot

      a bloodred amanita pushing up under fir,

      find a white-gilled Man On Horseback,

      notice dirt breaking and carefully unearth

      a cluster of gold chanterelles. I stop

      and gaze at yellow light in a clearing.

      As grief dissolves and the mind begins to clear,

      an s twist begins to loosen the z-twisted fiber.

      A spider asleep under a geranium leaf

      may rest a leg on the radial string of a web,

      but cool nights are pushing nasturtiums to bloom.

      An eggplant deepens in hue and drops to the ground.

      Yellow specks of dust float in the clearing;

      in memory, a series of synchronous spaces.

      As a cotton fiber burns in an s twist

      and unravels the z twist of its existence,

      the mind unravels and ravels a wave of light,

      persimmons ripening on leafless trees.

      The String Diamond

      1

      An apricot blossom opens to five petals.

      You step on a nail, and, even as you wince,

      a man closes a mailbox, a cook sears

      shredded pork in a wok, a surgeon sews

      a woman up but forgets to remove a sponge.

      In the waiting room, you stare at a diagram

      and sense compression of a nerve where

      it passes through the wrist and into the hand.

      You are staring at black and white counters

      on a crisscrossed board and have no idea

      where to begin. A gardener trims chamisa

      in a driveway; a roofer mops hot tar;

      a plumber asphyxiates in a room with

      a faulty gas heater; a mechanic becomes

      an irrational number and spirals into himself.

      And you wonder what inchoate griefs

      are beginning to form? A daykeeper sets

      a random handful of seeds and crystals into lots.

      2

      Pin a mourning cloak to a board and observe

      brown in the wings spreading out to a series

      of blue circles along a cream-yellow outer band.

      A retired oceanographer remembers his father

      acted as a double agent during the Japanese occupation,

      but the Guomindang general who promised a pardon

      was assassinated; his father was later sentenced

      as a collaborator to life in prison, where he died.

      Drinking snake blood and eating deer antler

      is no guarantee the mind will deepen and glow.

      You notice three of the four corners of an intersection

      are marked by ginkgo, horse chestnut, cluster

      of pear trees, and wonder what the significance is.

      Is the motion of a red-dye droplet descending

      in clear water the ineluctable motion of a life?

      The melting point of ice is a point of transparency,

      as is a kiss, or a leaf beginning to redden,

      or below a thunderhead lines of rain vanishing in air.

      3

      Deltoid spurge,

      red wolf,

      ocelot,

      green-blossom pearlymussel,

      razorback sucker,

      wireweed,

      blunt-nosed leopard lizard,

      mat-forming quillwort,

      longspurred mint,

      kern mallow,

      Schaus swallowtail,

      pygmy madtom,

      relict trillium,

      tan riffleshell,

      humpback chub,

      large-flowered skullcap,

      black lace cactus,

      tidewater goby,

      slender-horned spineflower,

      sentry milk-vetch,

      tulotoma snail,

      rice rat,

      blowout penstemon,

      rough pigtoe,

      marsh sandwort,

      snakeroot,

      scrub plum,

      bluemask darter,

      crested honeycreeper,

      rough-leaved loosestrife.

      4

      In the mind, an emotion dissolves into