Return

Greetings from the road.

I’ve been traveling these last couple of weeks, eating a little too richly and drinking a bit too much. I’m reminded that living well is a form of poetry, though admittedly that has not left me time to write any.

On one of my airplane rides, I found the following poem from earlier this year, which I hadn’t gotten around to publishing. It’ll have to suffice for now, before I return to Beijing later this week.

Return

The fruit seller slicing pineapples on the curb has returned;
I thought she had left forever.
The housekeeper who spent a few years back home is here again;
I never could do anything else, she said.
The swallows are back;
They had not all been killed off in fifty-nine.
The blind erhu player I knew from fourteen years ago
Who sat in the middle of the south side of Dongzhimen Bridge,
I swear I saw in Sanlitun the other day. Apparently
Now he has a wife.
Why can’t anyone leave this place
Where everyone says we’re not wanted? Funny, the thing about that:
We all have our reasons, listening as we do to voices deep inside
Where our real IDs are kept.