The Poet, Autumn, and the Sixth Zen Patriarch

The poet deep in autumn writes

A yellow leaf

spirals down

moved by wind

a dervish

brought to ground

where all things

in time are

at the last

combined

The Sixth Zen Patriarch bows and offers

It is neither

leaf nor wind

that moves

what moves

is mind

On Awakening

With the growing

of the light

forms appear again:

the chair in the corner,

mirror on the wall,

my hat on the table.

Did I just exhale them?

Didn’t I breathe them in

with the dark of night?

From the Fall 1993 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 10, No. 1)

Text © 1993 by Jill Bart