What in other places they called chinooks
\nhad come and gone so many times that I
\nhad grown wary of believing spring would come.
\nBut then, one evening, a shaven-headed man
\nin modest, humble roughcloth robes came down,
\ninto my rooms, wordless, fingers joined
\ntogether around a secret, a lotus formed
\nfrom his palms to bear it, and he smiled at me,
\nthe gleam of the secret illuminating his smooth crown.
\nHe unclasped his hands, and showed me what he’d borne
\ndown from the mountainside, what he’d found
\nblooming, a harbinger in the corner of his cave. <\/p>\n
Let them come, I thought to myself, and held up
\nthe fife to my mouth, blowing melodies on.
\nThey’ve come like this before, I’ve seen such blooms
\nthat have been carried in the hands of such men,
\noffered as proofs and demonstrations of things
\nthat I do not believe exist upon this earth.
\nMy song was sweet and thick and slow; no words
\ncan bend such as it did; no words could capture
\nthe twists of its winding route from breath to bones,
\nbut by the end it had taken a body in full
\nand stretched its legs, and sat upon my floor
\nglaring at me balefully.<\/p>\n
Alone with this melody I sat, eyes closed, listening
\nto the breathing of stars, the clustering plaque within
\nmy mind, an organ that slowly was sloping towards
\nthe world’s deepest core, towards its own slow nuclei.
\nI was becoming mired in quicksand already at my throat
\nand my eyes were shut, and I did not open them. <\/p>\n
Time passes, even when no one mentions it. Especially then.<\/p>\n
A perfume. The flicker of a bloom into my nostril
\nclasped my throat shut. It was a reminder. And
\nI heard the voice, the first one… and then another.
\nThe sounds of bare, plain feet that have padded stones
\nand road and dusk and continued like the tones
\nthat spilled from my flute what felt like a century
\nbefore, the reedflute now set across my lap.
\nMy eyes closed, I raise my hand among them, dozens,
\nfeel their brows stretching upward into smoothness,
\nthe warm skin of their heads that feel each breeze
\neven when I cannot. I feel the petals of their hands,
\nand I know something of what they have come to say,
\neven without them opening their hands to reveal it. <\/p>\n
It is not enough to say that I heard laughter,
\nwithout saying how it felt to hear it and be unafraid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What in other places they called chinooks had come and gone so many times that I had grown wary of believing spring would come. But then, one evening, a shaven-headed man in modest, humble roughcloth robes came down, into my rooms, wordless, fingers joined together around a secret, a lotus formed from his palms to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[14],"series":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-kr","tag-work-it-out"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xIep-spring","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}