The Bridge Rock in Mt Columbia

      

By Changming Yuan

among the mighty massive roars full of wild wonders and deep awe i come to worship this bridge-like rock carved with icy chisels of glacier water powerfully pounding constantly cutting a masterpiece out of the primitive with no sense of design or purpose nor intended expression of any feelings nor embodiment of scientific principles totally ignorant of my humble presence under my feet is a wooden bridge simple, but solid as a superb set of symmetries, a perfect human artifact where i stop and then step down to overhear God's whispers From Under the Small Rotten Bridge For the past half century, I have never seen A single frog in this city, not even in the whole country But there are four big-mouthed frogs, four frogs Squatting under the rotten bridge on the way leading To my junior high school, the same four frogs leaping Around afar in a ricefield of my native village, the same Ones playing on a big Lotus leaf in my heart Yes, the same old four frogs calling constantly From the dark pages of history invisible at midnight the ones meditating under a puti tree transplanted In a nature park, the ones swimming into a fish net Like bloated tadpoles, the same old four frogs whose Monotoned songs resonating aloud in different tongues With different pitches, yes, the four frogs still there At the End of the Bridge: a Personality Search From east to west Among worst & best In the world real &/or virtual I have been trying all my life Trying hard to find a fellow being As high-minded as high-mannered But alas, at neither end Of the bridge does any one Live a gentleren’s life As I so strongly wish to see As we all might hope to be The River and the Bridge over that little meandering river flowing anonymously from my boyhood there used to be no bridge so, we rode a ferry boat in spring and nake-swam across it in summer when it became as dry as reeds and straw we trudged a trail like a small stream and when it was frozen with sand and gravel we walked on the thickest ice we could find although not knowing how to ski nor did we fear losing our balance between boyish dreams and the cold winter since I left my native village long ago a bridge has been built and thus has become the only place and the only way to get to the other side of the river Birds at Risk your songs and calls all recorded your body well stuffed your genes being cloned your species digitalized now we are living a posthumous life we have become shadows of ourselves among so much bustling and hustling we are dying, birds, dying Beyond the Bridge Truth is so cold and hard As a big chunk of floating ice That each human eye can see Only one surface From a boat or the bank While it keeps flowing towards the sea, where It will evaporate up to the tropical sky Of history Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver; credits include ten Pushcart nominations, the Naji Naaman's Literary Prize 2018, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1,449 others worldwide. yuan changming @ Poetry Pacific https://poetrypacific.blogspot.ca https://happyyangsheng.blogspot.ca Lotus Image & License: Depositphotos_32738103_s-2015