What Softens: for Qi Hong by yuan changming

Bingata Panel with Tree Peonies (20th century) Teruyo Shinohara via The Met

                                    A human heart is
Neither money nor honey


Rather, it is a good natured smile of
Some dog playing with a cat, a bird
Feeding her young with her broken wings
Covering them against cold rain at noon
The whispering of a zephyr blowing
From nowhere, the mist flirting fitfully
With the copse at twilight, as well


As the few words you actually meant
To say to her but somehow you forgot
                              In the tender of last night


Yuan Changming started to learn the English alphabet at age nineteen and 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 eleven Pushcart nominations, eleven chapbooks (most recently LIMERENCE) as well as appearances in the Best of Best Canadian Poetry & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1879 others worldwide. Furthermore, Yuan served on the jury for Canada’s 44th National Magazine Awards (poetry category). 

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