the dragonfly is still, and I wonder whether it's dead, and further wonder whether anyone has thought that of me
Dragonfly [Kyōka]
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the moth is still.
is it alive or dead?
how patient am i?

How much grander must the world seem
closer to the ground,
a grass forest within the forest
with layered forest sounds?
Or would one be cut off from
the vaulted dome of sky,
and have one’s world shrink to
the limits of one’s eye?
If an ant thought it saw everything,
but only viewed a slice,
would its tiny ant mind have contracted a basic human vice?

a grasshopper
lands on dappled granite;
becomes a statue

butterfly,
at work on a flower.
a bird circles

a butterfly
sits in the road, until
a car passes