A Blue Bird At This Moment Took His Leave Poem by Wenjun Liu

She encounted a begger along a country walk
Who with face bended could barely talk.
Into his chipped mug, she threw her last shilling,
that staggered to the bottom with a silvery tinkling.

He shuffled along in the freezing rain
Dragging his leg through burning pain.
Rifle chucked to the bottom of the lake
A bloody flop all the grunt it made.

She gathered all the lilies she could find
To compose the pearl white sky
Of a bleary July.
Wading through the dews of a dawning field
With daisies and bluebells strewn here and there
The fading stars of a no more night.

Under a fir tree, he found his hide
With no one for company but a fever tide.
Dreams of her flushed face, a rocking chair,
Lit by a dying fire of orange light.

Blue bonnet took off from her wayward hair
And soared up high for heaven's lair.
She chased after up a knoll from a lagoon near,
And bent down for breath and an unexpected tear.

In blue panels a deserted mill,
Dried corn dust filled, a red wheel turning still.
Yet, somehow, lacking a man's hand
Like the rhododendron drying, fencing the foot of the hill.

The bonnet took a sudden dive
And dipped the floor by a whimsy struck.
It twirls in that playful way
That in his arms she used to sway.

The stink was what he could not take
Yet came to terms within a few days.
Sun baked the running creeks dry
Off the poplar canopied road
Along the walk oaks still hold'
He shared his puddle with a babbling toad.

It kissed the surface of a quiet blue lake.
Back turned from her never wavering gaze.
Sailed on, till, to her breath of intake,
The deep of wades.

He sunk to the ground
Ate the lotus of dreams mound'.
Till he woke to his last,
To a tinkling sound.
The white splash disappeared into the emerald sea.
A blue bird at this moment took his leave.