The Game of Bonding
—A Story of Plastics

What are plastics
but the same elements that make up
you and me?
Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen…
What are they, but like us 
of life longing to come into forms and beings
that can be seen, touched, used, and appreciated
through bondings—
bondings sometimes too intimate, covalent, and long-lasting
according to our ever so particular human needs? 

Nature made, or human-made 
can both sustain or destroy lives.
In essence, as matter
there is no increase, no decrease
no creation, no elimination
as the Heart Sutra says
as the physical law reveals.
Thus, no liking, nor disliking
shall be applied towards 
the same matter as you and me.

But the human, curious child of Nature 
discovers a small secret
designs a game and plays it too far—

Now we have waves, waves that are human-made
of plastics, of covalent bondings
coming into being—
for a few seconds or hours or days or years
of usage, then discarded
to form waves of sheets, chunks, chips, fibers, and particles
of waste, waste of covalent bondings 
on top of the lands, on bottom of the oceans
in the air we breathe, in the water we drink
in a small bird’s stomach, in a young mother’s breasts
in a cell’s nanometer membrane
in a surfer’s giant waves …

We are Nature’s failed students
punished by our mistake of 
not being able to learn the total truth 
before trying our hands on alchemy—
because we thought and think we can
because we sold our soul to the devil
who said, “Yes! Yes! You can!”
without mentioning the consequences of our actions.
The devil is nothing but the partial truth—
which is what we know and always insist as total truth. 
What makes anything evil, often, is 
our inability to bear the consequence it brings.

Yet, in Nature's time, God's eyes 
everything is degradable
including the consequence itself.

Buddha says:
All things are emptiness.
They are without defining characteristics.
They are not born; they do not cease.
They are not defiled; they are not undefiled.
They have no increase; they have no decrease.

Jesus says:
Love your enemy—
Your enemy is yourself.

Laozi says:
All is one—
The plastic is you.
You are the plastic.

Author’s Note: 

A covalent bond is a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electron pairs between atoms. The stable balance of attractive and repulsive forces between atoms, when they share electrons, is known as covalent bonding. Chemical structures formed through covalent bonding are relatively stable and non-degradable.

The Last Rhino   

Spring just began.
An old beast
gentle, grave, and ancient
the last male 
northern white rhino
yielded with soft eyes
to “euthanasia”  
 
leaving behind
the entire other gender 
of his species:
a daughter and granddaughter
in a zoo 
far from home.
 
On a continent
far from my homeland
every day and night
I think of my ancestors
their poetry and teachings.
 
Ancestors live in
thoughts and bodies
of their offspring.
Without offspring
ancestors cease to exist.
 
Even with his kind
once roaming
in crowds like clouds
upon wilderness and waters
like poetry and songs
whispering and whispered
for millions of years 
in languages of their own
 
an ancient being, a “beast”
gentle and grave
finally became the last 
of his gender and kind
drifting with
thoughts of the last two
of the entire other gender
into the increasingly 
virtual (and “beast”-free)
reality of humankind —

the terminator
and myth-maker
of other species.
 
It must be how
dragons and unicorns
were killed
and made.
 
What they had or
would have named 
and made of us
we will never know.

Chun Yu, Ph.D., is an award-winning bilingual (English and Chinese) poet, graphic novelist, scientist, artist, and translator. She is the author of the multi-award winning memoir in verse Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Simon & Schuster) and a historical graphic novel in progress (Macmillan). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee (2021 & 2022) and an awardee of China’s Xu Zhimo Micro Poem Competition (2022). She is a Library Laureate 2023 of the San Francisco Public Library. She is a YBCA 100 awardee (2020) for creative changemakers. Her work is taught in world history and culture classes. She has won grants from San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach, Poets & Writers, and Sankofa Fund. Chun holds a B.S. and M.S. from Peking University and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. She was a post-doctoral fellow in a Harvard-MIT joint program. Her websites: www.chunyu.org, Two Languages/One Community, and Chinese American Stories.