TWO

Two little mynahs

sitting on a  hedge:

One for sorrow,

Two for joy.

A little girl who believed

in fairy tales,

Blue lotuses lived

in her midnight eyes.

Bread and butter,

Woe and mirth,

Lightning and thunder,

Breath and death.

Life is measured out in pairs—

A duet tuned to disaster:

Two tablespoons, please.

What do you do with a poem

whose couplets

refuse to rhyme?

Would you tear it up

into a million flakes

that snow down upon

your summers and springs?

Would you torch it alive,

Let the howls hound you for life?

Would you incinerate it,

Scatter the ashes

beneath your dreams?

Or would you keep rewriting

till your blood runs dry

and you run out of reams?

A sunrise frozen in a teardrop,

A bulrush gasping in a heath,

A forlorn slice of moon in a bedraggled sky,

Some couplets can never rhyme.