Q and A in the Woods

in one summer morning,

i was standing 

on the bridge over a small stream

to see the water.

a young boy approached me,

asking me how many fish were in the water.

“Well, I did not count the fish, but about ten.”

Then, he started counting,

“one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!”

“You are right. There are ten fish.”

That was the way my day began and

I was happy with a young boy greeting an old Asian man.

There was no racial discrimination between an old man and

a young American boy in the woods.

I started to count the fish, but they were moving constantly

upstream.

--Yearn Hong Choi

 

Seattle

 

---Honeymoon Haiku

 

 

One full week in poetry reading

and poetry-dance ensemble, every evening

The brunch at the Market Place, and

Seafood dinner at the sea-side restaurant 

Made the best honeymoon

To the bride who loved poetry and dance.

He was a poet.

She was a dancer.

Seattle was his first port of call

On the way to Indiana University in 1968

From Korea as a penniless foreign student.

-- Yearn Hong Choi

Auguste Rodin's The Kiss

I look into your photo once a day.

At least once a day.

Someday, I look it ten times.

You gave me this album, small yet a most precious gift.

in it you are in front of Rodin's sculpture,

the Kiss in the National Gallery of Arts.

Even though all our letters and photos stored in my computer may be erased.

I will still have this small album, pictures you have collected in your first Virginia trip, 

in which the one photo that makes me so happy.

I can breathe when I see you in that breath-taking photo once a day.

Snows of Kilimanjaro

No one knew how the leopard reached the peak of the mountain,

Frozen in immortality.

Like that leopard, Ernest Hemingway’s spirit climbed up to the mountain,

the highest mountain of Africa,

White Mountain, snow-covered peak,

The Masai called it the House of God,

Whose throne sits up in the Heavens.

The Leopard, Hemingway and now, my daughter, have reached the summit of the mountain,

Uhuru Peak, Tanzania, 5985 Meters/19341 Feet.

To see and enter the House of God

That they could not see from the vast desert plain of Tanzania.

Mortals, both animal and man, aspire to reach the Heavens.

But I am touched by my daughter’s motivation of reaching the top to fulfill her dad's dream. 

He is a poet.

Veni, Vidi, Amavi

－－－Yearn Hong Choi

From the Niagara Falls

From the Niagara Falls

 

Listen to the rolling of the thunder by the water all day.    

Hear the roaring thunder of Indians all day.

Lo, the rainbow created by the gigantic waterfalls in the sun.

 

In the night falls,

Thunder comes down to my pillow, 

Then enter deep into my bones.

 

The placid river suddenly falls down 176 feet. 

Indians believed the thunderous roaring was God’s voice,

So they worshiped the thunder and rainbow arched over the falls.

 

After the Ice Age Glacier melted,  

Great Lakes emerged 

 Forming a natural canal

 From Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.

So, the science tries to explain.

 

After all, I am an Indian boy now

 listening to and worshiping the thunder.

 

The Niagara is not river, it is just a canal. 

 

Who said that life was 80 percent wind?

I believe life is 90 percent mystery.

 

 

 

Yearn Hong Choi. Moon of New York. Baltimore, Maryland

Yearn Hong Choi. Moon of New York. Baltimore, Maryland. PublishAmerica. 2008. 105 pages. $16.95. isbn 978-1-60610-780-1

  

The reoccuring themes of family and home loom large in these lyrical poems. Yearn Hong Choi landed in Seattle in 1968, a poor young Korean man who came to town with only seventy dollars and ambition in his pocket. His autobiographical verse serves to remind us that we can’t go home again and expect to find it unchanged. 

     A gentleness of spirit pervades the wistful memories of family in a series of poems: “Name,” “Photo Album,” “Departing,” and “Mother and Dove.” This same gentleness of spirit sees the sublimity and beauty in the natural world. He loves the woods in all seasons. The trees give comfort even while humankind interrupts their space. There is frequent reference to the sea and it is both a cause of uncertainty—and a path to a new life—yet he yearns for the solidity of land. This land becomes palpable in poems of the Arizona and New Mexico desert. This same western landscape, from which he sees the expansiveness of the universe, at times overwhelms the poet and leaves him speechless. 

     The only thing the reader may not be sure of is the rationale for the order in which the poems are presented. There may be a chronological order in which he has revisited the places and scenes. Yearn Choi uses language that is simple and direct in poems that are accessible to the general reader. His metaphors come from the eye and the ear. 

     What holds this book together is its collection of images and memories that give meaning to life. He asks the big questions on the mysteries of life on which we all reflect from time to time. Yearn Choi tells us about himself in dealing with the vagaries of life and his poems illuminate human experiences by their connectedness to those questions: who we are, where we are, and where we should be. He keeps returning to his homeland and memories of family, to the family home, his grandmother in the potato fields of Idaho, his children, retirement, and always back to Korea, as in the beautiful lines of “To Koh Choong-suk,” where he remembers: LiPo drank alone by the moonlight / but I drank all night long next to you. / We were two happy drunkards in the world. As this poet navigates the regions of our feelings and emotions, he stops to look while the rest of us drive on by.

J. Glenn Evans

Seattle, Washington