Six Audio Poems and Q & A with Lee Herrick

ARS POETICA

Yes, the ocean is Buddhist. And the foam
scrambling onto the beach is a symphony
of cymbals, small and caring like mothers
whispering to their children in the front pew,
sssshhh. Perhaps then the trees should
believe in God. Of course. How they reach
straight up after all those years like the Chinese
grandmothers rising at dusk, when the air's
cleanest, an orchestra of their own, stretching
toward the sun. None of this true. The ocean
is only Buddhist because a poet writes of it
that way-just like the grandmothers who keep
surfacing in his poems, usually dancing
somewhere near a body of water, blissfully.

KOREAN ADOPTEE RETURNS TO SEOUL

How can I tell you that my wife and I slept
behind three temples and some vendors flapping
the Korea Times at the flies on the durian

that in this racing city, the sleek Lexus races
down fast lanes, past skyrise malls

and sidewalk food stalls while the old men
call it a day and do not notice me at all,

a Korean adoptee smelling Seoul
for the first time in the thirty years?

The first night back, I dream about birth
rights and death dates, birthdates and love
lost somewhere over the Pacific.

The first night back, I dream in that hotel room
behind the temples about a birth scenario.

I dream about the woman whose body bore me,
right here in this city thirty years ago, where

that same vendor flapped the newspaper
at the flies on the durian, eighteen years after
the Korean War when Russians took the north

Americans took the south, below the thin line
that served as the new border. Maybe

she was thirty and I took too much from her
busy life and she could not imagine death

so she left me on the steps of a church.
Maybe she was sixteen, and

I was heavy on her heart and on her back
so heavy that in her dreams, I could sink
quietly, in a lake.

Have I mentioned this to you?
Have I mentioned how downtown Seoul

collides with the horizon, how I could smell
pieces of Fresno even here at the barbecued squid

vendor's five foot business, how close Pyongyang
feels when I am in Fresno among the blossoms,

the cement, and the hopeful ones like me and you,
counting on tomorrow being good?
Have I mentioned how Seoul is a city

in which I have loved and been loved, left and been
left, a city in which I found green plants raging

out of the earth, trees reaching toward the sun
with such vertical precision you'd think God,

yes, God had been involved in the planting?
I should mention how the sun tries to blaze there

like the sun tries to blaze here, how the son
finally rests having been home and smelled the city
and its possessions: the garlic fields, the rice fields,

and the woman's hands mixing
the kimchi into the egg

How his heartbeat sounds as if it is saying life
life    life    life    deep like the water

that connects these two cities
and the light breeze that blows in between.