There’s No Place the White Clouds Can’t Go
Shu Shan K’uang Jen
9th Century, Chinese
Nowhere the plumage of doves and angels
isn’t moving
over the dusty stairways of the Ancient City.
The Moorish tiles spell
as always, the name of God
in letters of fire,
in the shade of blue that is exactly your eyes after love.
I know both those loves.
They take wing inside me,
as if I were an invented city
and you had designed the streets.
I am all plaza and gazebo, 100% zocalo
where women
in long silks spin in an ecstasy of Godfire.
That is how it is entirely.
Just like that.
Ajah, Ajah, -
Come to me as if you are me
and I will come to you
Every alley, every sidewalk
crack is breathing in enormous broken joy
You know we have come at last home
because we can’t see anything here
that is not already the Beloved.
Published in Dazzling Wobble, FutureCycle Press, 2013, Mineral Bluff, Georgia
