It’s in the way a river holds to its bank
only to diminish.


Forget about overflows and droughts.
Silent, dusky light clings like a cloth to the body.
In every good Chinese poem a peach is mentioned.


In every flux and effluence a feather in the current.
A dim lantern figures the trees around the darkened huts.


What is buried in the earth is cold and what hurries empties,
the way sand keeps at beach glass.


True prayer is wordless.
And nothing,
noting is ever too far.