Cathy Xinman is a Canadian resident who writes poems in English and Chinese. Below, you can read her English-language poem “The Wonder of Love and Life”. It leans into emotional accessibility, an imaginative embrace of love’s presence in daily life, and the transformative power of art. Xinman is also a screenwriter who was honoured with a golden statuette at the San Francisco International New Concept Film Festival in 2023. In addition, she won the Remi Bronze Award for Dramatic Film Screenplay at the Houston International Film Festival in 2024.
The Wonder of Love and Life
It’s an April morning,
yet you, girl in a flowing skirt,
still chase the roaring tides.
Tell me, fair one –
have you found the sky’s delight?
The swollen lake sways with white clouds.
I see the blue lingering in the light,
no, they wander through nights too,
never ceasing their march.
I, too, am a youth hungry for inspiration,
but no, it’s they who grace me.
Starving poems—who knows how far they’ve roamed?
A budding universe
ignites within my heart.
I am but a small, insignificant person,
Radiant girl, do you seek a luminous life?
Silent joys, murmuring
like love’s flow between waiting and arrival.
But a day is brief—time for just one poem.
Your raven hair –
I crown it with starry names.
Let’s feel what happiness means.
New life awakens here.
Beloved, let me write about you daily –
you listen,
entranced by this lucid wonder.
It creates tears, and creates the sky, and creates the universe.
I revolve with poetry
In love’s boundless horizon of numbers,
between truth and soul.
What lashes my chest, stirs my core,
it seems born of earth,
of humankind,
of sky and sea.
But no, it’s love:
It’s the pride of the kitchen,
roses of wheat,
swift endurance,
all of living, all of life.
I know love breathes
like sacred songs.
Cathy Xinman’s English-language collection is entitled Where You Love Yourself. Find it on Amazon. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
