1/ A Rambling Sentence for Love Lost

How I sometimes wonder
Whether it is because you wear
Your years so well or because the years
Wear you so well that I fell in mad love with
You after as long as 42 years of separation without
Knowing each other’s whereabouts, again at first sight
With the whole Pacific Ocean between our shortening arms

2/ A Periodic Sentence for Love Regained

At a fairyfly-like moment
On a bushy corner of nature
Preferably under a tall pine tree
In Mayuehe, our mecca or the hilly village
Adjacent closely to the bank of the Yangtze River
With myriad tongues from my hungry innermost being
Each eager to reach deep into your heart, where my soul’s
Fingers could caress every single synapse of your feminine feel
Between the warmth & tenderness of love, across the Pacific & the Pandemic
I’ll join you

Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & 15 chapbooks, most recently Sinosaure (Redhawk Publications). Besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline, Poetry Daily and nearly 2,000 other literary outlets worldwide, Yuan served on the poetry jury for Canada's 2021 National Magazine Awards and began writing and publishing fiction in 2022.