Canto III – Luminous Clarity
My downstairs neighbor sweetly strums the Guzheng after Sunday breakfast
The radiant music flows through the cement floor into my tiny cloister
In the room next to me, my future wife teaches English to anxious middle school students preparing for their monthly exams
Their critical class rank measured down to the fourth decimal point
I drop Southside urban blues into the mix
The interplay of guitar, guzheng and grammar weaves a magic spell over my keyboard
Transitory illusions float about the unheated 8×10 room
A flint-hard bed, cheap wardrobe full of flotsam and tarnished vanity occupy the space
I stretch out in a corner on a 120 kwai (about 18 dollars) rope webbed lounge chair, looking at my reflection in the soot stained de-silvering mirror
Warm myself over my laptop as I peck away – chasing after quixotic dreams
Ponder the bare nature of existence
A distant spectral lighthouse
Beckons from shadowy shores
Commands from the gloom
Relinquish the soft sanctuary
Besieged by rough aggregated necessities
From the emptiness comes the real
Coalescing from disparate energies
Balanced on the head of a pin
Poised on the razor’s edge
There, gleaming beyond the shoals
Rises the miraculous morning star
Brilliant, white heaven’s fleck
The emptiness falls away
The void fills with light
The interwoven thread spun on the karmic wheel
Traces ephemeral patterns in corporeal space
The same energy that pulls tides around the planet
And lifts gossamer wings
Returns to heaven with each baby’s breath
This ripe potency powers all-from nothing
A divine light pierced my ever-questing heart
The imperfect darkness was illuminated
As I crossed the threshold
My old path was obliterated
Immutable sparks flared
Birthing moments of luminous clarity
With my new track consecrated
Hunkered down in my soul outpost
I gaze towards the blue horizon
Canto IV – Skyborne Heart
We first revealed our vulnerabilities in a guarded manner
Hard-fought habits transformed into trust and faith in the future
Wounds healed and laid to rest – we nurture one another
The heartbeats of half a lifetime grant us scope to explore
Hoping to discover a course through to the infinite
Pray the metaphysical landscape reveals unknown portals
Out of which, we create moments everlasting
These lustrous threads of forever are ours to weave as we will
Love now sings through golden wires between us
I so avow – part of my heart will e’er be skyborne
Together we fashioned a mote of immortality which grants us its splendor
Basking in the vivid intensity of love’s grandeur
At night we hold hands in our sleep
Reassuring each other that even as we dream
We are not alone
My love’s waking eyes deliver my soul from dim night’s extinction
Here in the dawn of our new life we found a splinter of paradise
On which we float about the turbulent chaos of the everyday
Our revitalized faith in the future has brought us peace
I push to make my mark
Scratch my name into the pantheon
So that I can drip my essence into the altered emptiness
And claim a speck of eternity for her
Love’s titanic tides roll across the face of the deep
A blue-green expanse sparkles over the eternity of devotion
Circling round the framing fire – I lift the shadow-veil
Touch of light against dark fills my mended heart with hope
Melts the delusion from my eyes
Open the Way forward
Watch me fly
C.E.Wheeler 
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