Sometimes, life is simple, clean and pure lines
like the woodcuts in my edition of
Chuang Tzu; there is a sense of stillness that
permeates the busy scenes of action,
that slices right through the day’s busy-ness
and yet is un-noticed, like the soft pause
of the flute when the oboe’s line plays through;
in the epiphany of rest, the soul,
often against the mind’s better judgment,
finds the vast, empty spaces between breath,
where there are no ancestors or teachers,
no lessons or ways of becoming whole.
Now that you have finished up your dinner,
what remains is the washing of the plate.
06 JUL 2003
