Free Fall

Read more poetry from Chiang Yomei in Asia Literary Review Issue 32, Autumn 2016..

We're in free fall

from life to life 

From the gallows on Tower Hill

to a palace in Old Cathay 

From a bed of jelly plankton 

to a dusty ger on the Steppes of Central Asia

Wandering through centuries 

each time seemingly made anew 

Unaware of the momentum 

the singularity of it 

all the lives we bring along 

Am I dreaming or being dreamt 

into this vast stream of imaginings 

This is Samsara 

an infinite net of unending knots 

What a surprise then

that it should be instantly undone

by a burst of clarity – 

an ecstatic salutation 

in the space

between two thoughts.