Motherland
By Bao Vu Nguyen
Her domain is where the gentle mist
Casts its essence upon the dark fertile soil,
While its milky cloaks swaddle lusty vegetables.
The emerald palms of the coffee trees
And the tender lobes of the tea shrubs
Are not neglected by its crisp embrace.
The golden day lilies and the russet hibiscus
Quicken from their peaceful reveries
At the fresh caresses.
The evanescent mist leaves behind
Droplets like footprints that twinkle in the sun.
Her love trickles down on the budding shoots.
The regal mountains, soaring above satin clouds,
Are her verdant crowns
Arrayed in acacia and eucalyptus,
Their sturdy feet set firmly on her bosom.
While rugged shoulders brace the sapphire dome.
Down her valleys thrust the crimson rivers,
Pumping life into the veined deltas.
Pikes, loaches, carps: silver blades of lights pulsing
In the flow.
Rice grass springs in her silty womb,
Laden with pearly grains.
The ample swords of limber stems ripple
Like a green ocean from the flatland
To the stepped mountains.
Banyan trees, rooted to the bloomy bowel,
Welcome visitors into their leafy arms.
Their knotty legs and gnarly limbs are
Firmly embedded in the ground.
The rustle of bamboo groves in the breeze
Answers the call of the thrushes and meadowlarks.
The canopies, with leaves like jade shards,
Flirt with the songbirds.
Quiescent water buffaloes loaf below.
Thatched huts lull on rustic plains
As placid koi ponds stretch like open skies.
Awakening
By Bao Vu Nguyen
I enter the prison yard with shame
Draped over me like a soiled rag.
Barbed wires coil like lashing snakes
Threatening to string me up.
My hope and dreams are mirages
Dissolving like errant smoke.
Darkness swallows me in reveries.
I surrender to abandonment.
My Mother appears in loving light.
My goddess bestows on me a choice.
Knowledge I choose.
My arid mind thirsts for this rain from Athena.
A deluge of literacy drenches
Dante, Poe, Shakespeare
I embrace the enlightenment.
I am awake.
I, Icarus
By Bao Vu Nguyen
I was that Grecian lad
In mirthful soul I was clad
Youthful locks, I had to wear
No burden was mine to bear
Like wreaths in the wind I swayed
Al day I frolicked and played
Oblivious to the hearth
High upon a cliffside perch
Meant to be the prison keep
Confined by the surging sea
Where, I with my father, dwell
Above the Aegean swells
‘Mongst elated earns we lived
Ne’er our lonely spirits rived
Then my father came arrayed
In feathered wing he displayed
Caked in wax the feathers be
A pair each for him and me
On me the wings he fixt
Bird and man I betwixt
I am metamorphosis
A homosymbiosis
He led me to the cliff’s edge
Then bade me to quit the ledge
And, upon the Aether, leapt
But I’m as brave as sheep
He saw my apprehension
And so made his ascension
Emboldened by his flight
I swallowed my foolish fright
And took wing as I was told
On Aeolus’ back I rode
Soaring over the blue sea
My heart was imbued with glee
While I rode the airy waves
My spirit mounted in raves
Thus impelled my flight higher
Than any other flier
Carelessly I ascended
Towards the sun I wended
Therein lies my great blunder
My wings were torn asunder
For I had ventured too far
Too close to the seething star
The wax liquefied anon
The feathers shed thereupon
My world became inverted
My flight has been reverted
I fell without a tether
Among the swirling feathers
Myself and my tattered wings
Towards Earth went spiraling
Plunged headlong to towards the sea
Where her billows swallowed me
And interred me in her womb
My resting place and my tomb
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