December





December

Yearn Hong Choi

December is the gray sky, and darkened world.

We all stand in the corner of darkened world

With a melancholic sentiment.

The fallen leaves have left the street.

I can see you coming through the naked trees.

Snow will come, like a letter.

I want to go to the equator in December,

And want to forget December.

I want to forget the passing of a year in an African jungle,

Or I want to sleep in your green memories.

I want to be with those who can extend the month of December

A little longer.

So I skip the winter, and want to meet in early Spring, like a squirrel.

My friend who visits without a call is truly my friend:

He leaves wood at my fireplace.

In December, the moon rises with a genuine friendship.

You are weaving my wool jacket.

The fireplace burning wood makes my room cozy:

Water is boiling for tea in the room of a poet.

The cactus is blooming in red and white in his room.

Foggy Rain

Foggy Rain

 by Yearn Hong Choi

The trees, the birds, the doe, the man, the lake and the forest remain as hazy traces in a foggy rain on this scroll of ink painting.

That bashful first love, bleeding like ink through the Chinese paper; why does it glitter like a jewel in the winter forest?

The entire scene is indistinct, made something lovely in that all too gentle miracle

Hawaii

Hawaii

By Yearn Hong Choi

You need a swimsuit

and a surfboard

for a necessary condition of

happiness.

The sun turns your skin to copper,

and the waves turn your body to an acrobat.

Oh, the vast blue ocean is all yours.

The Hula dancers wave their hands and bodies

as the wind from the ocean dictates their bodies,

or the  wind dictates the palm trees and flowers

in the island.

You need a swimsuit

and a surfboard

for a sufficient condition of

happiness

in paradise on earth,

if your lover lives on that paradise.

The rainbows on the Waikiki Beach after a shower

mean the engagement of the young lovers

for their everlasting passionate love.

At Mt. Kumkang Village, North Korea

At Mt. Kumkang Village, North Korea

by Yearn Hong Choi

I was more comfortable in the darkness.

The black night was concealing

The poor farmer’s grimace,

His primitive tools,

His barren fields,

His undernourished children,

Barbed wire between us

And the soldiers’ tense eyes

Between us.

Fireflies flying in the darkness

Reminiscent of a mid-summer night’s dream,

Still alive in the mountain village.

And a falling star in the darkness

Magical, in an otherwise dark land.

I like the dark night

Blinding me to the melancholy of the village of my youth

At Mt. Diamond Village.

Dokdo

 

Dokdo1
by Choi Yearn-hong

Don’t try to steal the lonely island,

Because it is lonely in the vast blue sea.

It has been owned by the Korean people over 1500 years.

Two-peak or three-peak looking islets were once the islands

For the seals.

So they named the islets Three-Peak Islands and Seal’s Island

Over the years.

Your Tokugawa Government made a wise ruling over the islets

After it inquired about the distance between Ulnung Island to Dokdo

And Oki to Dokdo: They belong to Korea, or Chosun in the 17^th century.

Don’t try to hide your own history of decency and justice.

The Meiji Restoration by Satusma and Chosu samurai modernized

Your country, then colonized Korea and staged the Pacific War.

Then, two atomic bombs forced your Emperor to surrender and

Brought Liberation to Korea.

But your invitation of Russiaat the ending of the Pacific War

Made Korea divided, even now.

You don’t seem guilty of your 40 years’ colonial rule

In the most critical time of the 20^th century.

Be ashamed!

Try to restore East Sea on the water between Japan and Korea,

And Dokdo from Liancourt Rocks or Takeshima in all maps

And persuade the world with history:

Tell them the Sea of Japan should be shared with the East Sea in their maps, and

Tell them Dokdo was the legitimate single name.

White waves from the blue sea will cleanse your conscience and a sense of justice:

Without confession of crime, human history cannot make progress.

2

The fishing boats could anchor at Dokdo in the stormy sea.

Some currents moved the fishing boats to Dokdo

Before they reached Ulnungdo from the coastline,

So that the innocent fisherman once placed Dokdo in between the coast and Ulnungdo.

They were not scientific enough in the 17^th century.

Dokdo was generous and hospitable to the fishermen from Oki.

But don’t steal Dokdo from Korea.

East Sea is not just the Sea on the East:

It is the name of renewed hope every dawn with the Sunrise

To all Korean people.

It is the hope and inspiration of 70 million Korean people

And the hope and inspiration of peace on Earth and Sea.

 

Seattle --------< by Yearn Hong Choi >



Seattle

The Pacific Ocean comes to the inland and makes a city an island.

Winter means rain, not snow, to the city people.

Needle leaf trees contrast with the snow-covered mountain tops like the Alps.

The city still has the Space Needle which was erected for the commemoration

Of the 1962 World Fair, the Boeing, and the University of Washington.

I see a Korean young man working as a janitor at the Roosevelt Hotel in the daytime

And as a dishwasher in the Greek Village, a downtown restaurant, at night.

He worked all of the summer months of 1968 and went to Indiana University after earning one semester’s tuition at the end of that summer.

He returned to the town after his retirement from a long college teaching career

And checked into the Roosevelt hotel on

Pine St and 6^th St.

No one recognizes or greets him.

He is trying to find the house of a young couple who accommodated his first night in America on May 30, 1968, but fails to find it.

He remembers this city as the place where a couple warmly welcomed him, a poor young Korean man who came to town with $70 and ambition in his pocket. He may come back to the town in order to find them when they are no longer a young couple.

Hibiscus Flowers by yearn hong choi

Hibiscus Flowers

The hibiscus flowers are always blooming in the Hawaiian Islands

With optimum sunshine, daily rain shower and rainbow in between.

A lovely young woman is walking out of the hibiscus flowers.

Her name is Miss Liberty,

Or Dancing Fire.

She is making the Islands a beautiful flower garden.

She has grown up with optimum amount of sunshine and daily rain shower

To ride the rainbow over the sea.

She becomes an angel.

She is my angel.