Beijing Beauty

They continued filing in as I was ready to leave…

Beijing Beauty

They continued filing in as I was ready to leave, characters
I wanted to get to know, each living a book I wanted
to read, and it struck me — as I am struck sometimes
with awe and fear that my story will never live up —
that we are lucky to be here,
straddling the lines and squeezed between them,
with secrets we tell and secrets we keep,
almost knowing who we want to remember and who
we’ll never forget,
among the beautiful in the way silhouettes can be,
suggesting substance underneath, or around the corner,
and beautiful in the way of possibility,
the prospect of discovery or wildness, of
primal smiles or mysterious gestures,
small talk of astrology and comparison of tattoos,
all our choices that led us from different climates
and odd corners, Ålesund or Zhangjiakou, Bergamo
or Barcelona, Mogadishu or Munich, Melbourne,
Hamburg or Houston, Tampere or Wexford,
Hong Kong or flybys or upstate New York, Katowice or Geneva,
or other teeming metropolises, to this candlelit bar in Beijing,
it’s all worth appreciating, don’t you think?
And worth writing a little. Not in the way ancient poets
pontificated on beauty as a thing to hold,
but as a breath we notice
on a warm day after a long winter, a black and white cat
crossing an alley, a jianbing proprietor who discovers
mayonnaise one morning and now puts it in everything.
As they continued filing in
with their lip gloss and hidden ambitions,
carrying on their shoulders hopeless ideals and catkins,
I very much wanted to feed another token into the arcade
to extend my time in this central Beijing amusement park,
but better angels
or ghosts of past mistakes advised I’d stayed long enough.
The night outside felt lonelier, colder, as if Spring
had stood me up. No offense taken. I wondered
if we would have worked.