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for Carol
for Micah and Sarah
Contents Title Page 6
Compass Rose
Arctic Circle
Fault Lines
Glimmer Train
Orchid Hour
The Curtain
2’33”
Comet Hyakutake
Morning Antlers
Compass Rose
Red Breath
7
In relief
8
Available Light
9
The Infinity Pool
10
Strike-Slip
11
She wrings
12
The Immediacy of Heat
13
At the Equinox
14
Returning to Northern New Mexico after a Trip to Asia
15
Qiviut
16
Backlit
17
An aura reader
18
Confetti
19
Spectral Hues
20
Windows and Mirrors
21
Midnight Loon
22
Point-Blank
23
The Radius of Touch
24
A cobra rises
25
The Unfolding Center
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
Books by Arthur Sze
Copyright
Special Thanks
Black kites with outstretched wings circle overhead — After a New Moon Each evening you gaze in the southwest sky as a crescent extends in argentine light. When the moon was new, your mind was desireless, but now both wax to the world. While your neighbor’s field is cleared, your corner plot is strewn with desiccated sunflower stalks. You scrutinize the bare apricot limbs that have never set fruit, the wisteria that has never blossomed, and wince, hearing how, at New Year’s, teens bashed in a door and clubbed strangers. Near a pond, someone kicks a dog out of a pickup. Each second, a river edged with ice shifts course. Last summer’s exposed tractor tire is nearly buried under silt. An owl lifts from a poplar, while the moon, no, the human mind moves from brightest bright to darkest dark. Sticking out of yellow-tongued flames on a ghat, a left foot — Near a stopped bus, one kid performs acrobatics while another drums — The Curvature of Earth Red beans in a flat basket catch sunlight — we enter a village built in the shape of an ox, stride up an arched bridge over white lilies; along houses, water, coursing in alleyways, connects ponds. Kiwis hang from branches by a moon door. We step into a two-story hall with a light well and sandalwood panels: in a closet off the mahjong room is a bed for clandestine encounters. A cassia tree shades a courtyard corner; phoenix-tail bamboos line the horse-head walls. The branching of memory resembles these interconnected waterways: a chrysanthemum odor permeates the air, but I can’t locate it. Soldiers fire mortars at enemy bunkers, while
