poet & physician

 
 
 
 
 

To diagnose sickness in absence
of silt and floods, I roast
a tortoise shell. Its cracks
compose themselves in flames.
Temujin cannot speak my native tongue.
This we share in common. 

A tracery of white rivers. Ghosts
inhabit our tracks.

In the year of the horse, I carry
the shell’s small cipher to the dying.
I cannot cry. I tell them soon
we are all returning home.

from “Cosmogony”
North American Review
Vol. 309, no. 3