^{Seoul, May 1980}

cherry blossoms are opening.    
Pink clouds canopy the road to town,    
wind shakes out sakura rain like piggy-bank coins.    
A new school year erupts.

I walk the long road to university.    
Cherry petals confetti my neck,    
my shoulders, like feathers.    
Gathering into silken wings.

The Japanese planted cherry trees    
when they came, tossing seeds that cavity    
her womb like spent bullets.    
More sinister now than tank tracks

And wreckages. Even sudden beauty and rebirth    
a Japanese image.    
The Korean girls stolen and    
numerous as planted seeds.

Japan calls these trees Tokyo Cherry,    
says their petals represent Japanese soldiers’    
brief but beautiful lives.    
I learned so a previous spring and wondered

What other miracles and newness    
were so planted? How did Korean    
spring occur before Japan    
came with flourishing destruction.

What is a first day or university    
without washes of pink and white    
without green men glittering    
black guns and boots mapping the path?

Tall whispering grasses also planted    
to cultivate order and grow goodness and cleanness    
forever. As I enter my city I see    
one in ironed uniform

stalk-still inside a gust of blossoms.    
The string inside me catches    
as blushing petals ceremoniously collect    
on his blood-green kevlar.

If he hits the curve before you do, all is lost
is all I remember when the coach yelled out
to start, to kick it down the short straightaway

into the curve, the curve a devil’s handiwork,
with Worsenski ahead of me, two hundred sixty
pounds, one hundred pounds more than me,

and all I could see were the Converse soles
of a boy I dusted in my dreams on the bus
out here to make the track team, letters

for my sweater, girls going goo-goo over me,
coaches from big-league schools with papers
to say I was headed for glory, my unkempt

disappointment in me now sealed by winged
feet beating me in the curve, Worsenski as big
as the USS Enterprise sliding through Pacific

waters, parting the air in front of him that
sucked back behind just to hold me in my grip
of deep shame until I wished I were not there.

I wanted more than being human, a warrior
of field and track would be bursting out now
ripping open my chest with masculinity

to make Jesse Owens proud or jealous,
or inspired or something other than me
the pulling-up caboose slower than mud

running like an old man really walking,
all the most valuable parts of me inside
my brain in wishes, in dreams, in things

not yet born into the world, in calculations
of beauty, in yearning for love, for the word
of love, for some adoration from Wanda,

the most beautiful girl in the whole block,
black like me and wondering just what
life had to give those of us who can fly.