Today, my office is chilly.
At once, I miss my mountain chum,
Who bound firewood in the valley,
Bringing it back to boil white stones.
I wish I could ladle some wine
To comfort on this stormy night.
But fallen leaves fill mountain hollows,
How could I find a track to follow?
This is poem #29 from the 300 Tang Poems [唐诗三百首], entitled 寄全椒山中道士. The original poem in Simplified Chinese is:
今朝郡斋冷， 忽念山中客；
涧底束荆薪， 归来煮白石。
欲持一瓢酒， 远慰风雨夕。
落叶满空山， 何处寻行迹？
I wasn’t consulted on the matter. Like most, I labor under the impression that it came from my parents, but for all I know it was just a random person off the streets who scribbled it on the clipboard hanging off the hospital bassinet. If there even was a hospital…
trunk ringed by fallen blooms,
only the pate contains hangers-on.
bright-fringed clouds
with blackened bellies drift:
summer day sundown.
A precept-breaking monk for eighty years --
still, I'm ashamed of Zen that ignores cause and effect.
Sickness is the result of past karma.
Now how can I honor my endless connections?
Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider in: Essential Zen. 1994. HarperSanFrancisco. p. 126.
When tigers chase, I run. When sunsets glow, I sit and watch.
Autumn moon first glimpse
is impossibly huge;
the next, it shrank!
Tiger Riding for Beginners 