Quest

      

By Yuan Changming

Quest   in a world always half in darkness your body may be soaked deep in a nightmare, rotting but your heart can roam like a synchronous satellite in the outer space, leaving the long night far behind as long as your heart flies fast and high enough, you will live in light forever   By Definition True Tranquility   Is the absence, or emptying of All self-consciousness, whether   You are lost deep amidst Noises, or even silences     Epiphany   After countless trials, your innerself Finally manages to climb up right Into the high room But only to find   The door is actually open To begin with    Self-Way   Every road leads to Rome, they say (Or Beijing), but there is only one   To your true selfhood; in other words Connecting all the trails and paths   You have ever travelled along, you’ll Find they make up the one long way   Guiding you to your own inner being   Ritual Walk   Once a week, I take a long Walk in the heart of the Pacific Spirit Forest Park, where I Enjoy dating, flirting with Nature in the depth of my heart   No, to be more exact, my heart is The forest per se, where I love to Open up my innerself once in a while Like those firs or cypresses, standing   Tall and straight, ready to let in A few sunbeams on a bright day     Inside vs Outside   Even if, as you choose You are already deep inside The circle, inside The trend, inside The office, inside The fashion, inside Her body, inside Their book, inside Its record, inside Our archive, inside Your heart, or even inside The very core, your inner being Is still lingering in the outside   The way I always prefer To see, to watch, to think     Naverise: for my Grandson   The moment he was born, speechless Or too excited, my grandson, who Wouldn’t love words as I do, cried aloud Out of his own long-muted melody   Between consonants and dissonants (Coded within the rings of a Douglas fir) Reaching high into the blue of sky By preparing itself to be unrooted   [river entering the sea by letting itself be swallowed]     On Monterey Beach   The wave has retreated farther, and Father back, the shell left straddled On itself, and all its dehydrated memories                                                                                                  It whistles like a night traveler: I have a dream And I cannot wait to see what lies ahead As if the content were fully sponged with   Consciousness, ready to evaporate into the sky Along with the wind, it keeps rolling up ashore Approaching human footprints, behind itself   The shell left a broken line, almost invisible Like a trail left by another wave, trying To accomplish a couplet or a marine stanza   Giving sense to wind: How it came to be, and Be here     Books released by Yuan Changming since Feb. 2026: 1/ Return to Roots (cnf collection, Alien Buddha Press)  https://www.amazon.com/Return-Roots-sketches-southern-Hubei/dp/B0GHNCQRPK/ 2/ Towards (novel trilogy; Silver Bow Publishing) https://www.amazon.com/Towards-Yuan-Changming/dp/1774034158/ 3/ Museum of Limerence (poetry collection; ABP) https://www.amazon.ca/Museum-Limerence-Silver-Romance-Poetry/dp/B0H3FHC6NG/ 4/ Bamakoola (poetry trilogy; SBP) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H6HWLNFB