Cloud Hands
By Arthur Sze
A woman moves through a Cloud Hands position,
holding and rotating
an invisible globe—thud, shattering glass, moan,
horn blast—so many
worlds to this world—two men dipnet
sockeye salmon
at the mouth of a river—from a rooftop, a seagull
squawks and cries;
a woman moves through Grasp the Bird’s Tail—
someone on a stretcher
is wheeled past glass doors—a desert fivespot
rises in a wash—
and, pressing her tongue to the roof
of her mouth,
she focuses, in the near distance, on the music
of sycamore leaves.
Copyright Credit: Arthur Sze, "Cloud Hands" from Sight Lines. Copyright © 2019 by Arthur Sze. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org, 2019)