连翘, and: While You Were Gone

Forsynthia suspensa, or weeping forsythia: a flowering shrub taken from China by European botanists, who gave it another name.

My father pushes the bikeas I sit, legs dangling,too short to ride.

It has just rained, the aircool under the plane trees,and streetlamps canopy

the darkness with yellow light.I don't remember wherewe are going, if this is a dream.

Now I bike home alonein the Midwest American night,moisture like a warm palm

against my forehead,honeysuckle vinesdripping over the grass.

For years after I left Xi'an,I mistook honeysucklefor 连翘 and gave its nectared

scent to my weeping nativeplant, which is itself scentless.This kind of false attribution

has its uses. Pushing my faceinto a feathery spray, it is springin Xi'an and the air is blossoming

                                        with rain—

While You Were Gone

I moved through the rooms like a fish at the bottom of a darkened tank.

Finished the curry you made, spooning the thick brown sauce onto bread to mimic .

Didn't go outside except to empty the vacuum cleaner's plastic tub.

The air was clammy as I lingered over our commingled detritus:

                hair                black lint from your socks                a few grains of rice                gray fur of dead skin clinging to the filter

How many times have we compared our faces, forearms, and bellies in the bathroom mirror after a shower. Here in the vacuum, we were both pale as dust.

The shed surfaces of us shot into the air like spores from a puffball and speckled the matted grass.

The snow all gone, melted almost overnight.

On the lawn, dark mossy clumps of my hair from when you had cut it and dumped it outside, hoping birds would use the strands.

It was not the right season for nest building.

Still, you came back. Called it home.