“Adrift”

The little river

with soft ripples

sent me adrift

to a rudderless life –

no anchor.

My hometown

remote but alive

here on my tongue.

Can I go home again

where poetry nurtured me?

Would the little river

receive me back to its flow?

ALICE TAO was formerly an instructor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey teaching Chinese. She is now retired and living in Carmel. She wrote this poem in 2016, two years before her farewell visit to her hometown Chaozhou, China. This poem was included in the anthology Ink Knows No Borders.