Horse Returning Mountain

This poem was originally published in Vibrant Gray Issue 3.1 2008.

Horse Returning Mountain

There are no horses here, only goat boys
fishing with string nets, a woman washing clothes,
brown murk of the Yangtze soaking into
her blue trousers, and a few unconcerned goats
snatching ferns from the cliff face.
Three red characters painted on rock name this place:
horse, return, and mountain.
No horses, though. Just a row of sampans
on a gravelly beach. No roads, no trails. Not like
Emerald Gorge where holes in the granite walls recall
huge beams that held ancient walkways, wide enough
for wagons and whole teams.
A horse might wander from up there.
Leave his master stranded in Double Dragon town
where he stopped for a cup of tea and some
little potatoes grilled on bamboo skewers,
the ones women still sell
to tourists at the water’s edge.
A horse could go down, looking for tender ferns
and long grass, down to the river
where the goats play with the garbage
washed up to catch on brush.
And maybe some fishing boy would find that horse
among his goats. Ride him back to town, get a string
of coins for his trouble. Square-holed Imperial coins
his children's children's child would swap someday,
on the riverbank, for three American dollars.
Maybe he painted the three red characters there.
On the mountainside, just above where goats graze.
Goats are never lost. They know their boy will come
to chivy them back up the path, crowding the tourists
who tromp toward mountaintop temples to stare
at the hundred Bodhisattvas of white jade, and gilded wood,
and paper mâche.