Basho sits beside the hut.
He notices the pond, the frog, the sound
made by the frog.
He does not write about it yet. He watches
for a long time. A cherry blossom falls.
He listens to the sound the water makes
without the frog.
The sound a page makes without a poet.
Again. The frog. Again. Plop.
He sees himself a man wrapped around
a silence.
Perhaps you have heard it, too, the sound
the water makes before it speaks.
Perhaps you, too, have felt it,
the loneliness, the light.
you are on a roll. basho is thebest, well, maybe, ikkyu, well maybe issa. anyway, great job. we decided we need some blurbs for mike’s chapbook. have yo read his pieces yet, and if so, would you be willing to write a blurb? thanks for th eshower of poems.
“Who would prefer the jingle of jade pendants when once he has heard stone growing in a cliff?” Lao Tzu
The power of Poetry http://www.powerofpoetry.org
and
Red Thread Gold Thread http://www.redthreadgoldthread.com
Wow! I like this poem!
“[T]he loneliness [AND] the light”? Hmmm, do we have a yin/yang thing goin’ on? (“Only to the unenlightened mind are different things different.” -nobody ever said this that i know of, yet still, it does sound Master Po-esque….)
Basho didn’t write about it immediately–of course not. It needed to percolate, to rise to the top, bringing its purpose along with it.
“What was your face before you were born?”
“Music is the silence between the notes.” -Debussy
What is the sound the water makes before it speaks?
“the sound a page makes without a poet..” Such a perfect thought. It makes me wonder if a poet falls in a forest, do the trees applaud? 🙂