American Sonnet: after Franklin’s Story Telling Workshop

by Wang Ping

If a blessing is a transfer of energy

Is a story the needle through our memory?

Elms, hands, sonnets . . . passing through a paper prairie

As the train glides into downtown St. Paul, a whiteout campus

Cajons, hand drums and dumplings for the Year of the Pig

No entry before 5:00, and everyone out by 6:30, says the stone–faced

     chaplain

Who could have foreseen the lies plaguing our minds and hearts?

Only good thoughts please, for all sentient beings on New Year’s Day

Pleads the Chinese poet, and every day, till our brain rewires itself

     into love fest

Students cheer when Good Heart walks in, drum on his back,

     blizzard in his hair

If matter is energy, which wave or particle or song awakens our souls?

What love makes our limbs tremble like wings of Lunar Moth?

What hand threads the story from finger to finger, mouth to mouth

Every word pregnant with fruits of memory and blessing?