ALONE

Noon! The soul affirmed.

Sunlight arrows through my heart

and not one tree casts shadows.

Inside my body, smoky depths of thought

thinned blue, Buddhist blue, all oneness,

this dusty world ashine as heaven’s mansions.

I walk one edge of earth,

my slow pace slower than the sun,

the wind always there to meet me.

Each step, wind rises in my heart,

my coat drifts open to the air.

Birds let down to branches. Stones refuse no longer.

What brings me to such solitude?

In sunlight this stone seems welcoming,

like someone in the dusk of life speaking through silence.

Few listen. Fewer hear.

No stone can be a bird.

Who lives simply, happily?

Not a stone on earth, not the sun in the sky.