First Day of December

today is a fair and lovely day
and i go sit in Da-an park,
up on the hill for my lunch break;
i should be preparing homework

for my students, and i'll rush to do it
later, i know; but i need this now,
to sit in the grass, drink my milk tea
and just to think of times past, of you.

all around me are flower sculptures
and all the Taiwanese mill about,
taking pictures of one another
up against these elaborate arrangements

of lavender and hollyhock. They say that
twenty years ago this park, this vital green
didn't exist: it was all just bleak housing,
like the rest. This city's zoning philosphy

is outrageous. From here, i can see
the 101 building, tallest in the world
and which i feel secretly connected to.
today there's a sad feeling of resolution

like reading the last page of an excellent
novel, or moving back to a city after
years of absence, knowing everthing's
changed, and all your friends are gone.

my cell phone informs me it's time to
start heading back; my peaceful interrim
is about to come to an end. I'll go and teach
my kids, shout when they push me too far

and hope, yet again, to still have the magic
to make them laugh. then i'll go home
and work late on my novel, trying to lay,
brick by brick, the towering words to my own

literary monolith. Here, in the gentle breeze
three white butterflies dance and caper,
settling on the flowers, then twitching their wings
as if stretching out the kinks, ready for another go.

the memory of you is strong today,
like a smoking machine in the street that
eats up the peace; like a song of searing mythos
that burn my mind opaque with its radiation.

it'll be my mother's birthday in a few days.
She's turning sixty. Next month my sister
turns thirty. I remember how you spoke
of the Goddess, with an alchemist's strength

of faith. i believed in those things you said,
but in the working years i've easily lost sight.
later in the park gangs of women will come
to do line dancing; then, late at night, single

men will cruise each other for sex. I've thought
many times in this park about religion,
and i think now i can say that my stories
are the only religion that can bind me for now

i trust they will lead me to the doors
that open to the unnumbered floors
of my consciousness, that i might one day
look out of my sleepy god's eyes,

and see out past this city, out to the sea
which scares me as it calls to me
and which eats up all histories, private
and national, given enough time.