This morning the low rain clouds are snagged like so much cotton batting, fogging the towering snags and old growth on surrounding ridges. Here is a poem perfect for leaving the Andrews Forest, which they’ve included as an epigraph in THE FOREST LOG binder containing work by previous writers-in-residence:
Little Pines
by Ch’i-ChiPoking up from the ground barely above my knees,
already there’s holiness in their coiled roots.
Though harsh frost has whitened the hundred grasses,
deep in the courtyard, one grove of green!
In the late night long-legged spiders stir;
crickets are calling from empty stairs.
A thousand years from now who will stroll among these trees,
fashioning poems on their ancient dragon shapes?*
Translated by Burton Watson
From The Clouds Should Know Me by Now
Edited by Red Pine and Mike O’Connor (Wisdom Press, 1998)
The Orebody 