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A Bottle of Red
Paperback
Publisher: And Then Press
Published: Jun 26 2025
Pages: 174
Weight: 0.46
Height: 0.40 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
It's been over forty years since I immigrated to Sydney. I am a Korean Australian poet. In the poem You and I are, I reflect on the division between South and North Korea. More than seventy years have passed since countless families were separated, and I wrote the poem to hold that long sorrow. Letting go of war and politics, I look into the world of a father, the head of a family-my own father, who sat in a small room surrounded by four walls, staring at a hopeless Wall while drawing up hopeful plans for our future. One day, not even realizing spring had come, I saw The Cornelian Cherry blossoms and thought, Ah... so it's spring, and in that moment, the children moved forward with their lives, tasting The Joy of Being One.
Even though Life offers no clear answers, I paddle my little boat in search of friendship. That boat drifts beneath the rising sun at Nelson Bay Beach, missing the mountains and streams of home, until a wave becomes a brush and paints a Hibiscus syriacus blossom on the rocks. Before I know it, it's autumn. When I long for the narrow paths of home lined with The Cosmos flowers, I find myself thinking: perhaps those cosmos wear rainbow hanbok and are counting stars on an autumn night. That longing becomes heartache, and heartache becomes The Resurrection Lilies blooming on the hillside. Leaning there, I gaze toward the sky over my homeland, hoping to feel the wind blowing from that direction-yet who could truly know such a feeling?
I stand in that wind and look toward mist-covered peaks. On a day of summer rain, a woman's nobility blossoms like the Blue Plum flowers. Her life, like a bush warbler perched on a thin branch, never ceases its quiet lament. Then, in an instant, she scatters in the winter wind, becoming tears. Meanwhile, her daughter enters college and, sitting beside Camellias in the winter wind, she begins to learn a love as pure and deep as falling snow. And now, as I gaze at the red twilight, I reflect on the sorrows and joys of life. Recalling the people who shaped our world and the histories they forged, I find that the evening sky quietly stains the life of a writer lost in thought, and the clink of red wine glasses echoes with poetic resonance.
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