April, someone sent me a plastic Virgin Mary
full of water, and I am thinking
perhaps, there is such a darkness
one cannot avoid going through.

Otherwise, why does her blue crown
as a kitschy lid make me almost weep
in the middle of Tennessee?

Back in my home country, early spring
I would harvest wet, sheathed shoots
in the forest of statuesque bamboos
rustling their blades in unison.

I can’t bottle the shadow of this evening
like Lourdes water, though it fills
the hollow stem of every living bamboo

section by section, its distinct compartments
as if to say: You will fear no more falling
to the level of the previous night
that kept you blindfolded from within.

As if each joint is inevitable, no matter
how much it hurts to ascend and keep
building itself into a divided column
without flowering at least for another century.