The swimmer hauled out on the rocks idly
Scratched bug bites while reading an old
Paperback translation of Zhang Xianliang’s
Grass Soup. Four young friends in bikinis
Discussed mothers, careers, boyfriends, and
Dreams of owning actual real estate one day.
Reflecting late sunlight, clear water shone
Beaten golden. A little thunder rumbled
Opposite the cloudless west, and a hiker
Called down from the trail to the shore that it
“Looks like the cold water’s gonna come up
Again!” No one on those rocks was hungrily
Poor. No one on those logs was capital rich.
Everyone basked in the light and laughed.
The swimmer looked up from internal concerns
About lightning, distance, and risk to notice,
Actually, no one else, rich or poor, was left.
“China has an old saying,” Zhang Xianliang
Wrote, decades after getting out of prison.
“Even if I had not wanted to write poems,
Poetry had a way of wrapping itself around me.”
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