Sunday morning.
Drinking coffee.
Listening to
the Happy Mondays.
The Zhuangzi running
through my head.
Like a butterfly in freefall.
It can almost make me
forget to see the whole sky.
And the light
penetrating everywhere.
Almost…….
​

Everybody
fades in some way.
Ten thousand fights
and it ends in
the stone gardens.
But not today.
The heat and taste of life
flows on all the streets.
Allowing me to
touch the clouds.
An opening to
some new delight.

The sound of rain falling.
The forms of the people
in their pure body.
In that stillness, the only stillness.
I see a map to the next moment.
A soul wandering,
just like you and me.
No longer knowing the names
of the trees or the birds.
But, capable of so much more.
Not of preference, but of belonging
A parade of our mutual life.
Leaping and wide, and
rising together from the darkness.

Days of rain.
And I asked myself.
What do I want?
I hardly had to search
for the answer.
It was there before me.
To live and to be kind.
Allowing each moment
to hold a lifetime.
No more refusing or regrets.
Just the experience.

Too much noise
around me.
Too easy for the
chattering classes
to summon the
cold mountains.
Convincing us all
that is the way.
The mantras seem
beyond human affairs.
Not even a line of
a poem hangs in the heart.

But as the last
cloud drains away.
I see the green
and yellow world.
Not as an illusion,
but in that moment.
A reflection of myself.
Each of us alive and rare.
Such a living
light to behold.

The sky is endlessly high.
And in the end
life is lost in dust.
These two things I know.
So, I choose not to be
with the lonely clouds.
Weighed down by worldly affairs.
Where sorrows never end.
And in an instant, I can
become an old man.
Instead, I press many days
into a single moment.
Telling a few of my life
in this beautiful land.
And tending to my words
from time to time.

My students took
their final exam today.
Full of trust and hope
as they entered the classroom.
I thought to myself.
When you learn to walk the path,
the whole world becomes your friend.
Lifting heavy things is no burden.
And you are no longer the only one.
Even the cicadas seem to
embrace the crushed shadows.
Such an ancient scene.
​

As for my remaining days.
I will not bind myself
to a lofty bleakness.
Or fold my wings and dance
with the show ponies.

Letting the world be.
There is still a peachy
story before my eyes.
Each scene a moment struck
by a wandering poet.

After stepping outside.
I notice the colours.
The sky, the streets
and a crazy butterfly
teasing the flowers.
As if by magic
a life shadow
creeps and overlaps.
And a thousand and one
illusions disappear.

Emptiness,
no obsession
and no hammers.
A magpie takes off,
the day shakes.
Loaded with words,
sharpened by a
summer breeze.
Nothing is an ancient scene.
I am ready to descend on the
streets and flirt with life.
This is how it starts.

​