Poetry’s Eons Needed to Make Out A Cosmic Premonitory Hinge or Point

 

Just as it took years,

years of consistent training

to master the art of Shui Xiu (水袖)

or Water Sleeves that had them flowing

so that on the air they would paint

singing grace and joy or sadness,

it’s far more unknown, oddly, this:

 

without lifetimes of arduous trying

poets won’t win either their white silk sleeves

to move speech and voice

where other form may not reach—

for isn’t this how poems come and gift

shoulders, elbow, fingers, wrist

to each other’s soul:

rippling water, drifting clouds—

 

or how love of mortals

is divinely sculpted

when one strikes her

with a cosmic,

premonitory hint?