What Opened, in the Flow
by Yingcai Xu

A tightly sealed chest
drifts down the current,
passing three great mountains–
one fresh with green, one fierce with heat, one gilded gold.

Then, in snow-white, freezing water,
it sinks into a lazy, dream-filled slumber.
Until a sudden roll of thunder–
it jolts awake
and, at the sound, flings open its lid,
spewing all it has long contained:
color, sound, form, and light–
a sky bursting clear through the void.

Carrying the weight of new birth
and a hollowness never to be reclaimed,
it drifts again,
once more,
down the current.



 

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