Dear Suki: Manggyeongsa Temple, 84',
even as you kneel forward, the glow in
in the air, too, kneels. You are all spine
and fealty, a lotus bud in prostration,
concave belly, covert eyes sift through
pale languor of frankincense. Chiseled
as a rhythm's resolve in restraint, you
grew languid with prayers' cathedrals
from cassock-throat to atonic fingers.
Obscured by the lambent mist, I move
against the susurration of devoted pith
then out into the largess of magnolias
and prunus trees. Here, wisdom turns
its cheval glass downwards the veins of
trunks and limbs, purer than rosary-
hands searching absolution, its hymns
a mystic life of brightness and shadows,
speaking with the talk of relics in chained
tongues.

Dear Suki: Kien Giang, March 21st,
the end point is always the harvest
of all forgotten things, whistling in
dashes of your merchant grins and
my nylon fishing net. As wild birds
share our footprints in the sand, I
rope on, gentling in my careful wing
of muscle rank with sweat, while you
rest a ghost of fingers where the sky
meets my wiry bend, spreading skin
upward and around to the sun. And
I will grow taller in enterprise, from
sternum to clavicle, breath by breath,
lurch to a stop only at the change of
seasons, ever ceasing. For it shall be
then, caught in the gulfweed of the sea,
I will know I had been floating there
beside you like amoebas for decades.