7/13/11

Dream
By Ethan Zhao


when the stars gleam in the cradle of the moon

is when my words shed their three-piece skin

and sleep frozen on the white page



words

some screaming

some beaming

all streaming

waiting for the embrace

of dawn

to awake unto their meaning



I am hundreds of years old

but I do not know how many hundreds



I ask that heralded night;

latching to the shoulders of the sky

how earthly the convenience of time

that perpetual verse and tangerine rhyme



sometimes

words are everything

as if the moon was sitting in my left hand

kissing the paper with her cool placid lips

and the sun standing in my right hand

smiling splendidly towards my left

watching her blush from his canopied blue



from here

it is easy to see that

the sun is chasing the moon



they say it’s called gravitational force



but everything

the wise stars

wind-blown peaks

wild animals



knew it was

love



sleeping to it

dreaming to it

waking to it

living to it



they are the mirror for your soul to see itself



be bad sometimes, lady

and then be really good

and then

just be



and when everything settles

and you think that all is lost in darkness


your beauty

having reached the most isolated shore

will come rippling back to you


- - -
When I met you, I forgot what language I spoke. then, slowly, you helped me remember.