Left Behind
All those wooden pens you carved from the sycamore
out front, ink still staining the nibs from the last words
on the gridded parchment.
You:
philosopher without philosophy, adrift in a monsoon
swept up by the currents tiding away the last days of your youth
always hearing of other trails, that the walk would end
at a golden lake. But instead of rice cakes and lotus flowers
you find concrete
tattered threads, fingers aching from cold winds. I think about
the graceful strokes tacked to the sycamore, the lyrics like light
shining down on the granite pathways.
Sharon Lin is a poet from New York City.
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