Early morning, swallows asleep, the horizon
a streak of whiteness like the belly of a fish.
Behind us, monks in straw-colored robes
chant Avatamsaka Sutra, the familiar
passage of Indra’s net, a ceiling of faceted
jewels, each reflecting infinite others,
which you call Analogue of the Cosmos
and I call Tale of an Obliterated Self.
We stop by the pavilion to buy smoked ribs
and corn. The river rocks with clear veins
are like the considered characters in an ink-brush
letter: porcelain cups, hairpin, farewell,
ginkgo railings, grief of a wife. We talk
tirelessly about love. Beyond the temple,
a girl shouting to her tired bull in rice paddies,
the bull mooing back. Cicadas in early autumn.
Those stone lions have water in their eye sockets
from the night’s condensed mist.