-For Matsuo Bashō
DRINKING
Poet, who will you intoxicate?
Drinking deeply
from your well, its whispering
water, we dip
a cup. Everything echoes
the holy Ōm.
Coming
and going.
Listen.
BLOSSOMS
When Buddha lifted the lotus
blossom
and preached his silent sermon,
it was better
to show things than to say them.
And you,
will you travel long with an empty
pouch of poetry?
How can you hold the moon with
words?
Be patient. Throw away everything
that clings.
Cherry blossoms glisten as they open
and fall.
PEARLS
You see a thousand faces
in the mirror.
Is there one that isn’t you?
See how pearls
hold each other’s hands, how
together
there’s a singular shine. How
many moons
in the journey of the Harvest Moon?
STUDYING ZEN
No one studies Zen. Nothing’s
there
but the last blackbird of Autumn
on a leafless
bough. Who asked you to be a
scholar?
Even the book of the wind is only
for schools.
The old masters left behind their
baggage.
Roaming like wild geese, they
carried nothing, nothing
at all.
John Valentine is a retired teacher living in Savannah, GA.
.
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