無處 9

無處 9

Bright windows prove helpful

as old eyes look for needle's next

plunge. Where will it come out?

Every time, surprise

  

Her teacher tells her she is a nun. She begins sewing a black robe. It's too hot in here for that, so she pokes a hole in the wall, to run a fan. For a break, she sits in the shade of the cottonwoods, sipping switchel. Quail run across her legs, one by one.

Let go of emptiness and come back to the brambly forest.
Riding backward on the ox, drunken and singing;
Who could dislike the misty rain
pattering on your bamboo raincoat and hat?
In empty space you cannot stick a needle.
-- attr. Dongshan Liangje, The Five Ranks tr. Leighton in
Cultivating the Empty Field, 77