Singing Heard Through a Closed Door

Like foxgloves, like a coat mending itself
in a dove’s night, ascending and descending
under a bell-shaped light, or as one sees
at the threshold of the mind’s immortal view
the yellow house of childhood unhewn,
its new half-door and windows
now wandered from the past,
sunlit, ample, shadowed by trees
whose leaves are keys
of a lover’s instrument
heard once in the ear mingled
with fear, with exhalations,
ghosts blown from the mouth
to the mind, and the sound of the sea that, running
in its blue and silver gowns, by returning to itself
again and again must leave you.

Jennifer Tseng