Yangtze by Sarah Howe

Yangtze

The moon glimmers

in the brown channel.

Strands of mist

wrap the mountainsides

crowded with firs.

Declining cliffs

sink beneath vast water.

By remote paths,

twisting pines.

Far downstream

two sides

of a half-built bridge

fail to meet.

Our crude boat

chugging

points to Chongqing.

As someone I now forget

once said

journeying is hard.

My face greets

the evening breeze

I listen –

the dream of a place.

A cormorant dives

by trembling light.

From the white

eyelet of a star

the sound of ripples.

--

A fisherman

skirting shore

in his high-prowed skiff

crossing bamboo oars

comes up with a jolt –

nets catch not fish

but the wizened finger

of a submerged branch

for below

a sunken valley persists –

slick bare trunks

furred in wafting fronds

have water for sky,

ghost forest.

Roots rot deep in the hill

where buried rock

is still dry.

Windows film,

doors drift open

in the empty concrete

shells of houses

towns that once

held hundreds

of thousands

slowly filling with

what, what is it

they fill with?

Someone I now forget

once said

journeying is hard.

The moon glimmers

in the brown channel.