Via Negativa

Centuries ago, the moon fell
in love with a comet which blazed

then burned away into nothing. I
don't know if this is true. Perhaps, 

even now, no one notices her plain but 
beautiful countenance. Tea leaves darken 

in their little gauze tent, and the water 
begins to amber. Why should I feel ashamed 

to write about such a small pleasure? Shawls 
of milky fog wrap around the mountains. 

In the norning, tea-pickers gather withered 
leaves for steaming and drying, and marvel:

the merest brush with heat blooms a little
film of joy that spreads on your tongue.      

Before or after, there was
no fanfare. No one prostrated 
themselves before my family to ask
for my hand, offering sacks of rice 
or yam; bolts of cloth, money, a small 
pig or goat which, ceremoniously, 
would have had to be returned 
and replaced with a less 
diminutive animal. No ribbons 
hung from the rafters, no voices 
practiced trills in the choir. 
No longer young, and yet we looked 
so young, leaning over the balcony 
in the rented time-share cottage 
while our friend snapped the photo. 
I did not wear white, but there was 
freshly fallen snow in the background, 
spring still only a rumor at the beginning 
of March. We chose verses to read and 
words to say: promise or prayer, spell 
for the future, through joy and sorrow— 
whatever we believed would carry 
us safely through the tides.
 

When we say light falls early
this time of year, sometimes 
I think of light on its knees, 
then prostrate on the grass. 
I want to go outside, see if I
might help it up on its feet 
again. Perhaps it needs a boost; 
a bit of bread, a cup of orange 
juice, something to raise the blood 
sugar, lift the pall and emptiness
that comes as the curtains darken.
How many griefs lift their heads
and howl like wolves in the reed-
streaked hills? Bare branches open
to falling snow. Then the moon 
shows her face of burnished 
pewter— a consolation.    

When your palms itch 
you resist the urge 
to scratch and instead 
put your hands into
your pockets. For luck, 
your mother used to say.
As if any heat that flares 
isn't a signal from dermis
or epidermis but the very
fingernails of fate 
letting you know what
might precede 
a windfall.
 

I seem to have  no trouble doing   squats.  Of course, 
my daughter says—We're Asian; we know  how to Asian 
squat. This    is true.   The new    trainer asks if my   
sciatica  flared    up after my last  session, in which 
all  she made me do   was four  sets   of squats and 
split  squats using TRX    straps, alternating  with 
resistance band  leg kicks. I think of my grandmother 
who tucked  her heels   directly  under  her haunches 
at the dining  table, and ate  comfortably    in this
position:   expertly scooping   rice and meat or fish
into  a little  ball  with her  fingers,   delivering
the savory package   into her mouth  without spilling 
a single grain.   Some friends  have  said,   perhaps
this   is a remnant    memory from     colonial times,
our    ancestors stooping    and squatting, squatting
and stooping    in the fields   as the foreman or the
Spanish landowner hovered   over them, whip   in hand. 
Which would mean   squatting  is  survival  strategy,
a way to fold  the body  so it  pleats  smaller   and
takes up less   space   than it thinks it should. But
maybe we   were born  with a memory  of our   origins
and connection    to the earth, how    the god of our 
fashioning pinched our brown   bodies into shape from 
the mud    and baked us   just right in the sun. When
we fold    and sit     closer to earth  we  feel  how  
the    power   surges  through  our feet   as we rise.