Ode to Depression

Action begets action but

Inaction is its own reward

Without will or want

Stillness overtakes

The human heart

Settling down as
Ripples ambiguate

Across the surface
Of the pond

To speak of it
Is to loosen the spell
To admit the truth
To oneself is
To take but a sip
From a cool
Restorative well

But no less unceasingly
It's a flat expanse of earth
Where I have come to dwell
No more than a sandbar really
Sic transit the gulls and herons
From one day
To the next while
Clouds linger
On the horizon

Poem for the End of Summer

Where are you?

A cricket cries

Again and again

Under the light

Of the waxing moon

Over here

Comes the
Irregular reply

From the edge of

My perceptual field

Above the fan's
Whoosh and whir
Ever so faintly I feel
The heavens wheeling

The still point

Of the turning world

Is turning still

Every cycle and season has

Its beginning middle and end

Over parsecs and eons
Of continual forgetting
Every something becomes

Nothing and soon enough

Becomes something again

Nature's First and Last Green is Golden

Nature's first and last green is gold

The hue to which all life is beholden

With eyes open or closed the warmth

Within and without unfolds

From seed to flower to sheaf

Howsoever it may seem brief

We are transported beyond

The confines of a single season

As from dawn to dusk to dawn

It is gold alone that endures

Vincent van Gogh, Soir d'été, 1888.

This poem is in reply to Robert Frost's poem which I have copied below.  Much as I admire Frost's poem I think he rather misses the point, which Van Gogh captured on a summer night altogether much more clearly.

Nature’s first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold

Her early leaf’s a flower

But only so an hour

Then leaf subsides to leaf

So Eden sank to grief;

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay

A Poem for the New Moon (by Jiao Ran)

There are quite a few great Tang poems written to or about the moon, Li Bai's Drinking Alone in the Moonlight and Li He's cycle of twelve lunar poems being perhaps among the best known.  Here's a little gem by Jiao Ran that I came across this morning, which strikes me as somewhat unique -- a tribute to the new moon or the moon that isn't there.  Being on the verge of a new moon and a new lunar year, now seems as good a time as any to publish it here on my blog.

Poem for the Mountain Moon

Night after night

An old man

Always takes faith

In the mountain moon

Tonight the old man arrives

But the mountain moon

Is nowhere to be seen

* * * * 

詩山月

皎然

夜夜故人

長教山月

今故人來

山月知何在

It may be worth mentioning that Jiao Ran, in addition to being a poet, was a Buddhist monk, so I don't think it's overreaching to suggest that this poem can be read in a spiritual light, or perhaps better said, in the murk of the lack thereof. 

    

Meditation Poem (by Shih Te)

This is one of the best meditation poems I've come across yet in the Chan tradition.  It is attributed to Shih Te, who according to legend was the occasional sidekick of Han Shan, the otherwise reclusive poet of Cold Mountain fame.  There are those who doubt whether there ever was such as person as Shih Te or Han Shan for that matter.  But reading this poem I have little doubt that whoever wrote it spent many long hours sitting in meditation, on a mountaintop or otherwise, open to the radiance that fills the earth and sky.

Not going not coming

But upright and deeply rooted

Residing neither inside nor outside

But somewhere in between

Like a drop of water

Unblemished and contained

Yet open to the radiance

That fills Heaven and humankind

无去无来本湛然

不居内外及中间

一颗水精绝瑕翳

光明透满出人天