Learning the Characters
(Yue Liang - The Moon)

My hand,
stiff as horsehair
falters and balks.
"The moon," he tells me
and draws the lines.

Listen to me.
I grind the ink,
look into the wet black slab
but see no sky.
I worry my hand
across the page
the sun fastened tight
to obstinate dusk.

"Watch"
he insists.
His lesson forms
in rock and light.
I retrace his strokes,
and he smiles --
my crude moon
climbs a crumpled sky.

But later
alone at my desk,
I sketch the spiny shadow
of the asparagus fern,
a cat on the sill
looking into the night

And the moon
blooms like an orchid
underneath
my astonished brush.