#1403 - Shisendo

 

1403

4.307

4.xi.23

Shisendo (Joozan-ji)

temple of the poetry immortals

 

time takes me here

to be among them

                 again

 

so many years

this many poems passed

and so remains the image

 

a little world

forest is moss

 

trees are stone too

 

in the whispering shade

 

ants on pilgrimage

 

some few face away

some lean in

they are all wisp bearded

the immortals

 

each looks a little to the side

each on the occasion of a poem

 

funny hats

ghost locks

a scroll could be a sword

 

all eyes to the shade of the tree

and the tree itself

 

a path leads through the poem

you make from these

 

someone comes to sweep

 

they are behind you

they are ahead

 

November like a summer’s day

 

a dragonfly’s bright turning

 

and other wings lit

 

the sombre bee

voices unseen

 

shrub rounded like a verse to drink

eyes to seasons passed

great nature

 

shoji

tatami

our world is straw

from it, see

 

hibiscus path – a journey

 

to shock the deer away

hear how it comes when you’ve forgotten

won’t be guessed

soozu – shishi odoshi

this is punctuation

heartbeat of the day

 

a leaf falls to be gathered away

and one into my lap

it’s like a garden in your head, the poem

 

patience in the shadows of leaves

though breezeless, never still

 

everything built is

flimsy as a word in stone

 

garden is the place inside a poem

 

the inside’s out

the great is least

 

one comes with a practiced calm

to wear the day out

to be further

 

I make a record of it

 

how time stood

how I stopped for it

as if I had never gone

 

and you see – this is the way I am here

this is a kind of home