by Sonia Di Placido
At a crossroads we intersect. You greet me, ask,
“Which way shall I go or will you follow? I’ve been here
eons, though recently, I have come into thinking
I’m sometimes lost. This is all a familiar (a)new.”
Navigating your thousand years among the recent human
ballast of stones in angular noise, you continue to seek out
Weeping Willows for a gentle hook into the sway of breeze.
My unexpected, unconsidered, Friend? of the seaside city
who whirls its visit among planned urban spaces—
fresh silt and sediment.
Have you circled yourself enough today?
Flit Hebei of its newly grouted terrain?
I am introduced to you, these first footsteps
over cubed granites, limestones, marbles.
I see you dwell between Binhai Area Shadows
of Structure and the Sun’s Rays. The Mortar bare—
bearing your venerable ancient sentience.
Who knew the predator changes form, arrives miniature
among the forewarnings of colossal dragons where
the pruned roses don’t care much on any given day?
It’s humid and they are thirstier than you.
I hear your wings speaking in tongues seeking warm winds,
lifting high, then low with the musical honk of moving
humans driving past. You’ve a heavy-hearted concrete
competition among cemented stone.
Odonata, the regal larger larvae of an Insect Kingdom,
flits between firmament and cement—moving horizontal
with Taller Standing Towers—erect to Yang, out of earth’s still Yin.
Penetrated human emblems: mixed earth Skyscrapers
Granite, Marble, Limestone—aggregates
each Boulder bound for the arrival of
A True Romance.
Greetings to the Dragonfly of Binhai
In downtown TEDA district—my dominion and your domain
bring us closer at the knees of a shortening Sky, scanning low
not above some human head, reaching up between the eyes.
— from Juniper Volume 1, Issue 1