An Assemblage Of Crows \ Ryokan's Visit

Nancy: Before the yellow goldfinch, the raspberry-pink purple finch, the robin redbreast, there are the crows.  Constant neighbors, they share their lives with us.

An Assemblage Of Crows

A gathering, a coming together

     before dawn

     black sky

     black trees

     black birds

to the spruce, to the fir

     to the hackmatack

     crows on black steeples

     waiting, silent

     monks filing in

waiting

     for what they alone can hear

     the sound of a struck gong

     the sound of black transforming

     the whisper of light on trees

Sun rising, golden sky, golden trees

Crows

     black birds

     leaping in salutation

     leaping

     black birds in the sky

Alan:  Preoccupied with our goal-driven lives, can we welcome those unexpected gifts – the friends who come in, sit down, and make themselves right to home?  Would we even allow it?

Ryokan’s Visit

If you came visiting

would I know how to entertain you?

I’m always so busy!

Here you are stumping up the driveway

and look at this place, awash

in newspapers and half-read books.

You’d want to spend all day

drinking and talking poetry;

I’d be sneaking glances at the clock

hoping you wouldn’t notice.

There’s just no time for guests!

So tell me, my friend,

when can you return?