Chinese Butterflies

    by Carol Sanger

In the photograph, he is all back 
bent by the dresser’s weight of winter clothes 
surrounded by others trudging uphill and downhill, 
rounded under refrigerators and ancestors, pots of food,
part of the ant line of villagers 
leaving Beichuan after the earthquake
after the order to relocate to Sichuan. 

Traffic moves both ways – silent, grimy, 
desperate as a brushstroke, its impulse out of sight - 
as farmers, midwives, accountants and teachers hitch themselves 
to necessity and walk, their tracks powder pieces 
of towers, glyphs, reasons 
why men tide when the earth shudders.

Like the forest as it empties to flee fire, 
they shift, adapt even as they grip habits, language
the past of who they were, as they search for old food. 
Children and children of children scatter.
They lean into the wind and listen 
for the soft sawing of crickets:
that hidden tension, the common memory.