In Place 22

 22

A quiet fellow waits out
morning service, anxious
for his daily walk along
green country ways, reading sign







Shown here at age seventeen, this cairn terrier is mostly blind and deaf, but can find warm sunny spots and lives by scent. The old woman thinks of their walks as a kind of kinhin, or walking meditation.

On either side of the footpath rises a row of green pines.
Over the valley, the scent of a wild plum is wafted to me.
Each visit to this place yields me a fresh spiritual gain.
-- Ryokan (tr. Nobuyuki Yuasa, The Zen Poems of Ryokan 57)