Soulmating

      

By Yuan Changming

Soulmating      He lives on the yang side of the planet & she on the yin; through Platonic love They maintain the balance in (human) nature   His is hard & straight like ‘1’ while hers As soft & circular as ‘0’; coupled together They make up the whole cyberspace   Time renders him immortal, when space Expands her indefinitely. Entangled, they form The coordinate, where history sucks all black holes Ways of Rejuvenating        If your shiny eyes, or charming face Does fulfill some purpose outwardly Of all the positivity that hides within, then Keep your heart young, & you will remain Sexual, beautiful & never get the crookedness Winkled on your forehead, or seniority edging At your synapses.       Why not go climb a tree To build a nest for a bird in passing, get Yourself totally lost in singing a favourite Song, reading a teenager story, watching A cartoon, making faces to a wanton dog Playing hide-and-seek with a bold squirrel A wild cat, or an evasive whim?    Go learning A new skill like laying an egg, drawing A picture, blowing a trumpet, or starting a new Business on line. What I say is, by meeting You after 42 years of separation, & at first Sight, falling in love with you again      As I did at a high school meeting, I can Not only rejuvenate each of my synapses, but   Make you always young as my love per se   Calculating for Redemption     While counting what I really possess, I ruled Out my car & house first, for they could be Lost or destroyed anytime; then I excluded Money & fame, which would have nothing To do with me after my death; finally, I Dis-counted my wife & even my offspring As the latter are totally independent Human beings, while the former can readily Marry another man. As for the poems I have written, or the books I have published They would vanish even before my name Could be connected to my life’s story. Yes, I do Have some memories, yet they will become Downloadable & subject to random edits By a stranger, a robot or a godling. In other Words, what is really left is only, nothing but The very thought of you that is bubbling in The quagmire of my mind at this antlike Moment, which is being sucked into a black Hole in the mind. What else do I really have?   π–Like   If my love is the circle's circumference Your life is the diameter, then My missing for you is a π  Which starts with the whole number Of 3, including every day Every night, & every minute Between day & night   After the separating (decimal) point, it is As indefinite a neural net as the universe itself    All Day Long   More adaptable than a summer stream   No less wild than a wild west wind   My missing for you can flow & blow Without leaving a single trace behind    Like the water or the whirl, like all that    Has no shape has no shadow The Bird     Perching now at the branch reaching Out high from my inner tree, you seem Ready, I fear, to fly away the next moment & would never return For all  The comforting, or even the sheltering     My heart can offer like a true nest   Cohabitating       I share a small, rented space With an unseen bird that came to live with me After her wings were broken   I toil daily, paying the rent & food with my blood While she sits at the window, watching The sky, always lost in imagined flights   She is not my wife; rather, she is my soul- Mate, my other half or other self, the innermost Shadow of all that makes me a human     Bio: Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently lives in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. Writing credits include 16 chapbooks, 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 3 for fiction besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2,207 other publications across 52 countries. A formal poetry juror for Canada's National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022. His debut hybrid DETACHING, 'silver romance' THE TUNER, short story collection FLASHBACKS, cnf collection RETURN TO ROOTS and novel trilogy TOWARDS are all available on Amazon.