Like the Wings of the Butterfly

			
			The miner, Wang Shu Bin
			tells the story of his last
			hours with his wife:
			trapped within the rubble
			of his hospital ward
			after a devastating earthquake
			“My wife called to me
			in the darkness, we were both pinned
			under debris, ‘Wang Shu Bin!  Are you
			alive?’  I said yes, can you move?
			She said, ‘I am pinned from the waist
			down.’  I began to claw away at the 
			cement blocks that buried me.  It took
			two days for me to reach her.  She
			was only three beds away
			from me.  I tried to get to her but a large
			beam blocked her from me.  I could only 
			touch her fingers.  When she realized I was
			beside her, she was so glad her fingers 
			fluttered like the wings of a butterfly.
			For two more days we talked of our past,
			of our love for each other.  Throughout
			her fingers touched mine, speaking to my
			heart, directly.  Finally, she said one word to me.
			‘Wang.’  Then the butterfly fell silent.

			
			
			Tombstone
			

			Tina looked up at me and 
			a smile crackled across her face
			like the lightning bolt I saw 
			creasing that thunderhead
			sixty miles away over
			the Pear Blossom Highway. 
			She smiled and swallowed.

			
			
			Without 
			

			TV speaks to anyone but
			I don’t understand the message.
			There is a reason for all this
			but I don’t want to remember.
			I think instead of the desert.
			Or a pile of rusting debris
			or a bleached boney thing
			with feathers torn
			from an oblivious sky
			or of riverbeds laid barren
			robbed of life by merciless fate.
			Change tugs at my sleeve
			begging me for mercy
			but mercy has run away
			with the circus.
			The desert returns to my thoughts
			a bullet riddled shack
			the light spilling through
			a shower of meteorites.
			The miracle of high noon.
			I want to lay down and sleep
			through summer.
			Birds of prey circle overhead
			waiting the foolish mistake.
			Perhaps the circus will
			come back to town
			once more.

			
			
			RAFT OF MORPHINE

			
			Photographic images mix
			with memories and recent occurrences
			forming a scrapbook montage
			in my mind’s eye, a constant
			source of distraction
			everyday, but even more
			appreciated on this day,
			day of waiting,
			day of passage, perhaps, or
			merely day of floating closer to the edge.

			
			You lay sleeping on your raft of morphine
			drifting in a cool white fog
			towards the end of the world
			towards the rim where the waters of sleep
			spill over into oblivion.

			
			I cannot be with you
			dare not swim in those waters
			out to your raft.
			But I am with you in spirit
			floating with you
			my hands resting on your
			sleeping form, as if touching
			would make such a difference,
			as if being there would matter.

			
			It cannot matter that
			there is this hard spot in my chest
			or that I am so sad or
			that I would choke on my tears 
			if I could see you now.

			
			Only this fact that I now honor
			my memories of you
			that I will always see you
			as I saw you ten years ago:
			my father’s older brother
			and my uncle Jim, a man
			I respect 
			only this will matter
			and only to me.

			
			But I must let you go now
			I can hear the roar of water.
			It’s deafening and yet, it comforts.
			
			You drift on, then, and
			good-bye.