"what did I care about worldly fame

now I'm living in a distant town

with mountains and rivers keeping us apart

the Tao doesn't come with many burdens

until the memories pile up on this day..." – Wei Ting, "In My Prefecture Quarters Affected by Autumn: To My Cousins"

"...that turned in the other had been carved long before in the form

    of a fox lying nose in tail seeming to be

asleep the features worn almost away..." – Merwin, "Fox Sleep"

Another Sunday Morning

Out in the valleys along the city highway

    the churches this sunday are still filling their lots

matched inside the hollow nooks of the iron

    bluffs still tangled in late March by the leafless

black trees we speak of the good word still

    of those who can tell us that the world is not

lost but it is the ridge lines the fine deep carpeting

    of the sleeping golf course that is the church

this time and we plan on our run along the marshland

    trail and over the old creek bridges to watch

for the waterfowl and learn the patterns in the dried

    mud of all the passers-by just when a low flying

eagle passes just overhead just forty feet high

    and circles only once over the steady beaver dam

tucked inside the clefts and the stacks of water

    sedges wondering where the ripples part the water

just down below where the geese slide to protection

    and where a single buffle head like a royal

like a stroke of precise direction tugs itself

    in shallow lurches under one of the old railroad

bridges and here we must hear something

    of a sigh in between the dedications and sermons

of all these falling words of mind to mind

    until the pair of cranes built like inspecting

farmers walk along in front of us the knees tight

    the beak tucked down to terms and not a love

of us no mention of who gets the next lesson

    and we wonder where the center of the times

have gone and turn to run never to hide again