Double Life
Every morning, even before I open
My eyes, the little doors of the cage
My crow cannot wait to flutter out
Into the light-washed heavens
Striking its shadowy wings into beating
Every night, even after I put
The cage back inside my cozy house
The bird still glides close to the moon
With its wings feathered with spirits
Forgetting to return home
Sometimes I wonder why
Day after day, night after night
It refuses to settle softly in its cage
Like a domesticated parrot
Were I it, would I?
Or you, once the cage broken
Would the bird return
Coo itself into sleep, dreaming
Of celestial freedom?
Another Snapshot
A man is searching everywhere
At dusk
With a leash
Unleashed in his hand
While the dog hides itself beyond a fence
We grin from ear to ear
At our shared secret
Charon
You may well hate him
But you cannot help feeling envious-
That business of carrying the diseased
Across the River Styx is ever so prosperous
The only monopoly in the entire universe
That has a market share
Larger than the market itself
Daydreaming, on this side
Of the river, how you might wish
To be an entrepreneur like Charon
A success American dreamer
Changming Yuan, author of Chansons of a Chinaman and twice nominee for the Pushcart Prize, grew up in rural China and has poems published in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, London Magazine and more than 200 other literary magazines worldwide.
