He unfurls a scroll of rice paper, snatches up a brush,
dips into fresh ink, scrawls seven characters.
His student throws a handful of sand over the wet
surface of the poem, blows off the loose grains,
reads aloud, then looks up and around at the way
the red delta stretches flat, how a lone boatman stands
in the stern swaying an oar twice his height,
how three herons touch their wings to water
and dragonflies hover in the rushes,
how a stickwalker practices among the brown
humpbacks of water bison, and beyond,
a circle of huts in the haze of wood smoke.
Now, Li Po says to his student, take this poem,
throw it into a stream, and watch it sail away.