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Best Poems Written by Bernard Chan

Below are the all-time best Bernard Chan poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

The Secrets of Mornings

Each day dawns laden with secrets.

The morning dews are crystal balls, 
each holding a secret trailer of 
a fragment of day.    

The birds, chirping incessantly, 
gossip among themselves about the
delightful things you’ll find at 
the weekend market. 

In the crevice between the sun's 
virginal light and last night's shadows, 
an old friend waits for a 
scheduled chance encounter, 
bearing a gift of forgotten memories.

Fresh brew drips into the carafe of your
old coffee machine, tapping out
a Morse code of the new 
thoughts and feelings that will percolate 
into your brain in the hours to come.

And the curtains billow with echoes 
of the laughs to be laughed.

The day is waiting to confess 
its plans for you.

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

The Lost Years

The photos stopped 
when you were 10 or 11.
Around that time, you started refusing to 
have your pictures taken.
A few candid shots are all I’ve 
managed since then.
In them, the look on your face is growing inward, 
as a cocoon slowly encloses you in a 
translucent mystery,
turning you into a dark silhouette 
as you start to construct your 
own parallel universe,
in a tug of war with a thousand things 
you are just starting to learn the meaning of, 
morphing into what the world will know,
what I will, with any luck, 
recognize only with squinted eyes 
when the cocoon reopens.   

For now, I can’t see you.  

All I can do is wait.

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

Sardines

Through the water they glide, 
an immense mosaic of millions of silvery fish 
on their migratory run, 
obeying a call immemorial, 
a mystery of aquatic unison 
choreographed by instinct primordial. 
 
They billow,	
a grainy smoke cloud 
in which light drowns.   

A ruffling,
like an enormous bedspread 
being shaken out in slow motion 
by an invisible giant.  

They turn into a mesh,
glistening, spinning around, tightening, 
a net woven with fish for catching water. 

They stretch, 
a submerged galaxy 
unspooling into a braided rope 
in a blue universe. 

They bank, 
and silver ripples across the shoal, 
a wheat field touched by a soaking breeze. 

Then they move on, 
flashing by, 
like underwater rain falling sideways. 

Before the predators get to them,
my eyes are feasting.

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

Kissing Snowflakes

Like ballerinas airdropped from on high, 
Snowflakes pirouette to damask the air, 
Tutued geometries dimpling the sky, 
Veil our stinging eyes with arabesque fair. 
Downy fields we walk, where aureoles tide, 
And white breaths upon your face softly flare. 
As my swooning kiss to your frail smile dips, 
A wayward prism alights upon your lips.

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

Bird Code

Quartet of phone wires,
Tall birds grouped higher or low,
Mozart or Chopin?

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Alibi

In the end, we were there-not there,
two present absentees 
sharing an apartment vacated by a relationship 
and the worst kind of loneliness -- feeling solitary next to someone --
partners in the crime of abetting mutual misery,
though neither of us can really be linked 
to the crime scene, can we? 

We’ve got each other’s alibi.

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

No Prettier Sight

The Eiffel Tower gives up its power,
                               When seductive Paris we travel through.
                                  Mayfair is oft-huddled in a shower,
                               Tahitian lagoons lose their dreamy blue.  
                                Little awe Greek islands inspire in me,
                               The romance of the Taj Mahal does pall,
                                   An aurora’s magic I’m slow to see,
                                Each place we go I feel I’ve seen it all. 
                                  The eye no Saharan sky can excite,
                                  Few vistas thrill on a hot air balloon. 
                              The Arctic presents no breathtaking sight,
                                     In Rio I’m hardly over the moon. 
                             The loveliest scene pales next to your face,
                                And no glimpse of paradise can amaze.

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

Undress the Night

The evening 
is soigné in outfits of rumpled elegance 
at the tables and on the bar stools, 

resplendent with a necklace 
of glistening notes from the piano 
in the corner,

rouged by the blushes imprisoned 
in our wine glasses.

Let's stay for a while then,

until the blushes have flown to our cheeks,

the patrons are back on the streets
or between the sheets, 

the pianist has played the last song,

and the night is done, 

or waiting to begin, 
its shyness shed.

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

Soulmates

My mind
is the Internet.
Yours,
Google.

Details | Bernard Chan Poem

Komorebi

The canopy of leaves
                              sieves the morning sunlight into beams
                                  as if from an opaque, porous sky,
                            laying bright polka dots on the forest floor.

                   The hiker slaloms around the shafts of light as he goes, 
                                   crosses an imaginary finish line, 
                                     arms raised in mock triumph, 
                          unaware he has finished last behind a field of 
                                  resident elves, gnomes and fairies 
                                              racing him unseen.


                           [“Komorebi” is a Japanese word meaning the 
                                 sunlight filtering through tree leaves.]