After Bei Dao’s “Toxin”

Autumn’s breath catches short

A mother’s window open to
light marbling in leaves
music of a world in vivid decay,
a lifeboat shedding its cargo

it’s yesterday’s currents, it’s love

sorrow dark and bottomless as the ocean
when a ship collides into the present
I take a moment to bury my hopes for tomorrow

give me another history

I’ve made a shroud of belonging
a refugee tent pitched in the mud of memory.