Nancy: This phrase, carved on a stone water basin at the famous Japanese garden at Ryoanji, calls on us to realize that we can build in our minds the garden, the world, the universe, the simple shelter in which to meditate or dream.
What You Have Is What You Need
engraved on a water basin at Ryoanji
A flower.
If not a flower, a leaf
still, without a leaf
a twig.
Perhaps a curl of bark.
Lichen.
The stone on which the lichen
rests.
A stone. But not just a stone
a fossil. A shell of time
and here, a place to rest
or a place waiting for me
that I may never have less
than I need.
Alan: Attention: so simple, so difficult. In the attended moment, so much happens!
Thinning The Corn
Bending low, thinning
the seedling corn;
weeding the hills.
No thought. Attend
the task. Listen.
Wren’s piccolo.
Double reed of hermit thrush.
A hawk, no –
jay making hawk-call.
And that ravens’ caucus?
Are they critiquing
a cornered owl?
Distant thunder –
sense of cumulus
piled in the north
too far for rain. Attend.
Crunch of tires on gravel.
Car half a mile away
on the town road hill.
Here in three minutes.
Someone I know?
Or strangers stopping
to talk through rolled-down windows
a little sheepishly (lost)
who say
as they start slowly up the lane,
“Such a beautiful place!
So beautiful!”
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