from Peach Blossom Spring

"The other villagers invited the fisherman to visit their homes as well, each setting out wine and food for him...One of the villagers said to him, 'I trust you won't tell the people on the outside about this."   – from preface to Peach Blossom Spring










Saul had known of both great and small adventures. So many other young people spoke of times spent on their city blocks as children, of neighbors that they had known for all their lives, maybe a deep winter hunting trip with a grandfather. These were not the things that Saul had remembered. He remembered many hours on travels out west, the hundreds of trails that he had felt he possessed as he learned their curves and growing patterns.

Years ago, when I was young, he thought,
there were the grand old rocks of the mountains.
From their tops, looking out over lake,
there were new heights as the eyes of the trees.
At the backside of the great lake shoreline,
the beach was all rock and sun rarely reached,
a long formation jutted out into the clear water
where we would walk and look down the bottom
and I knew then that was the purest of mystery.
Later I would try to read all this back into being.
Only a small handful of books could bring
the great mountains, the passing boats,
alive and dancing along the lines of the page.
Years passed and then came that old yearning
to return to the tops of those same mountains,
and it circled there much like the eagle itself.
I took long walks to recapture the open hours
but it rarely worked so I conjured them myself.