Three Poems by Changming Yuan: Pumpkins, Night Rain, Behind the Ballad

Three Poems

by Changming Yuan

Pumpkins

Arhats
squatting around in a fast fading field

each flushed with protests
against frost coming all too soon

Buddha puts you there
to guard an entire season
but we will relocate you
to guard our rented houses

the last of an orange-dotted landscape
the last to ripen

Night Rain

flocks of transparent birds
pecking at the opaque roof
as if to dig a sweet nest
right above my dream

I know it is not drumming from Africa
That is resonating with my heartbeat

Behind the Ballad

to bring this single word
into the mind, the cherry flower has prepared to bloom
for the whole spring

to bring this single line
onto the paper, the thunder has rolled
through the entire summer sky

to bring this single stanza
onto the mouth, the west wind has blown
over all the golden fields

Changming Yuan, who grew up in rural China, teaches writing in Vancouver. Yuan's poems (are to) appear in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine, SNReview and nearly 200 other literary publications worldwide; his first collection Chansons of a Chinaman has just been released by Leaf Garden Press (Tennessee).

Copyright 2010, Changming Yuan. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.