Friday Poem

For Example

There was an old Dutch lady
Lived in a room in the house
In front of my small shack
Who sat all day in the garden
By my door and read.
She said she knew the East
And once had seen a book
On Buddhist monks. “And you
Got no business going to
Japan. The thing to be
Is Life, is young and travel
Much and love. I know
The way you are, you study hard
But you have friends that
Come and stay, and bike, and
There’s the little tree you
Planted by the wall” As I
Filled my water bucket from
A hose. The sun lit up
Her thin white hair a bird
Squawked from the Avocado at the air
& Bodhisattvas teach us everywhere.
.

By Gary Snyder
From Left Out in the Rain
North Point Press, 1986