Pasture \ Memento Mori

Nancy: How many wise sayings, aphorisms, memoirs could be summed up in the word “change”?

Pasture

We call it the “pasture,”

but it’s filled with trees.

Time and growth invalidate our terms.

It was a pasture once –

when I was green, and young,

and loved from need,

and never got enough of summer and of sun.

How saplings change!

We kept that pasture in our minds

with words: an artifact.

I don’t know when it happened,

but I grew –

and growing things don’t stay the same.

We use the old words still,

we call it love,

but change won’t stop for words.

We’re living in the pasture;

we’re living in the shadows of the trees.

Alan: The winter Ryokan came into my life, poems flowed quickly.  As spring advanced and I busied myself outdoors, his visits grew few, fewer.  Almost forgotten.

Memento Mori

It’s been months since I’ve seen him –

all hectic summer not even a glimpse.

Now, after first hard frost,

clearing the wrecked garden, under squash vines

I find his half-rotted cloak,

a nest for mice and bees.