Yi Lei

“MOTHER—

Mother—
You lounge on a cloud
Surrounded by God in His absence.

Mother—
I dream
You are always returning.
I wake and wait
For your steps in the hall.

Mother—
Mornings, I hear you puttering.
At night, you mutter and hum over the laundry.
The earth is still warm from you.
I see your needlework in the grasses that sway.
When you were alive, I worried your hair gray.
You cried like a little girl wanting her way.

Mother—
Losing you, my life has grown brittle.
The air has lost all its give.
Nothing surrounds me.
My hands have never been so greedy
For the warmth of your body,
Or my eyes more restless,
Scouring the crowd for your face in the sea.
God is real. The earth perceives us. Ghosts
Roam among the living, bargaining for an hour as flesh.

Mother—
You are a green leaf
Swept from the tree by unseasonable winds
To wander the heavens like a star.
I pray for a day each year when we might collide.
In still water I search for your eyes.

Mother—
How could you have lived once and not forever?
How have we not gone everywhere together?

Mother—
I see you on your cloud,
A shadow above this impossible city.
I hurl my voice at the sky—Mother!
And what answers back is the absence of everything
That isn’t you.”
― Yi Lei, My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree: Selected Poems

“nature aria
.
.
"Autumn wind chases in
From all directions
And a thousand chaste leaves
Give way.

Scatter in me the seeds
Of a thousand saplings.
Let grow a grassy heaven.
On my brow: a sun.

This bliss is yours, Living
World, and alone it endures.
Music at midnight.

Fistfuls of rain fall hard, fill
My heart with mud. An old wind
May still come chasing in.

Resurrection fire. And me here
Laughing like a cloud in trousers,
Entreating the earth to bury me.”
― yi lei