Happy Chinese Valentine's Day

Today is Qixi, the seventh day of the seventh month on the lunar calendar, a celebration of the myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.

Zhinü, the weaver girl, was the daughter of a goddess; Niulang, the cowherd, was a mortal. Of course the weaver girl’s mother did not approve: with one swipe of a hairpin, she separated the two by a celestial river, which became the Milky Way. Only once a year can the couple reunite: on Qixi, when the earth’s magpies fly up to the heavens to build a bridge that the lovers walk across.

GIF by Nina Dillenz

I wrote the following poem years ago, and worked with Liane Halton to turn it into a piece for our collaboration Poetry x Music. The track is below, featuring David Moser on piano, Ryan Etzcorn on drums, and Jared Lang on bass.

Magpie

I watched a magpie fly.
I watched it fall and rise in the swirling ethers
of a dreamlike sky.

I watched the dark bird breathe
in air lighter than breaths, livelier than feathers
in windy cusps and crests.

I watched, because wasn’t that you and I
consorting in the sky,
swimming in the cosmos, dark and bright?

I watched the magpies fly.
I watched them dance like embers in the night.
Did they also outshine the stars on your side?

I watched the piebald birds alight,
build that bridge for us to unite.
Do you still want to after all this time?

Fly for me, fly to me
Build that bridge to me
Look for me, look for me
Bridge my broken heart for me

Dancing in the sky
Dancing in the sky

I watched a magpie fly
across Heaven’s silver sky.
How effortless downwind,
how mighty its upwind fight.