qarrtsiluni

by Changming Yuan

1/ Firefly

Burst with courage
You are flying around, using
Your little light
Like a sharp scissor tip
To rip off the heavy curtain
Of all the darkness
Blown out of frenzy dreams

2/ Seagull

As if right from heaven
A snowy seagull charges down
Trying to pick up the entire ocean
With its bold beak
As the tsunami raises
All its fierce fists
In sweeping protection
Against earth’s agitation
In foamy darkness

3/ Crow

A baby raven
Popping up from nowhere
Tries to
Establish itself:
one dark truth
On the skeletal tree top
Yawing fiercely
Towards the sky, the wind, the buildings
The fields and the entire afternoon
All so fluffily white
In jade-toned snow

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Changming Yuan, four-time Pushcart nominee and author Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Politics and Poetics: A Comparative Study of John Keats and Li He (2009), grew up in rural China, holds a PhD in English, and currently tutors in Vancouver; his poetry appears in nearly 570 literary publications across 22 countries, which include Asia Literary Review, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Kanto, SAND and Taj Mahal Review. Together with his teenager poet son Allen Qing Yuan, Changming edits and publishes Poetry Pacific.