(for Nikki and Annie, remembering
their Gotcha Day, June 20, 2016)

•••

I fall into a bit of China
at the dumpling place in my
American city, across the street
from what used to be the newspaper
where my fella worked 40 years
and I spent three, the brick edifice
now a silent, hulking ghost, its spirit
hovering on the edges of our
consciousness.

Not unlike the trip I made with
Nikki to Changsha and Guangzhou
to fetch a girl named Joyful Purple Dragon
in her too-small wheelchair, rendering
Nikki an instant new mama, who’d
also toiled at the brick ghost 6,600
miles from the ancient land of ghosts.

Nikki, who’d lived there for a decade,
who introduced me to all things Chinese—
not least to chrysanthemum tea, the pale
floating flowers blooming in steaming
water cradled in a small, heavy iron pot,
which I’m delighted to find with dumplings
in my city, exactly eight years after Nikki
and Joyful Purple Dragon, became family.

This child who, even then, was also
called Annie, now squired around in
a snazzy purple chair, now a 15-year-old
American Chinese girl who still loves
to have her nails painted, who still loves
pink, who, if she could speak, might
tell the story of her long journey, who,
if she could swallow, might sample
a dumpling, sip some chrysanthemum
tea as her mama and I did in
her homeland,

whose ghosts surely live in her,
too—only the kindest ones, I hope,
her ancestors keeping watch,
offering protection and love as
this brilliant girl wheels through
her marvelous, miraculous life.