[after Kobayashi Issa]

Winter to spring to summer,
day to dusk to night—
balanced and even,
the earth, the moon, the
perfect clockwork of stars
harmonizing. And you—you are
at the center of this whispering
eternal connection. Listen to
it and know that, in this universe, each
one of us is each other.

[after Kobayashi Issa]

Whenever I feel I am not
what I should be, yet
still unsure what I may become,
whenever I want to ask a
question of the Buddha—
What is all… this?
I hear an ancient
answer, whispered by a pine:
Make of your spine a bodhi tree,
then sit, and know that you are dreaming.

[after Matsuo Bashō]

Catch a storm and ask it how
it calls itself admirable,
how it fools you into
seeing what it wants you to see.
Use the interruptions of lightning
between darkness and
darkness, to not
merely think
but know that life
is eternal, and that it is
only the world that is fleeting.

[after Pablo Neruda]

“Once again my words / turn to the waves.”
—Pablo Neruda, “Ode to Waves”

I took inspiration, once,
from the sea, and once again
from the sky, my
poems, my words
offered back to them in turn,
shyly, humbly, hoping merely to
see, if only from afar, the
muse as she turns, and waves.