June 01^st, 2024

Overnight At a Mountain Monastery

Massed peaks pierce
The sky’s cold colors;
Here, the trail junctions
With the temple path.

Shooting stars pass
Into sparse-branched trees;
The moon travels one way,
Clouds the other.

Few people come
To this mountaintop;
Cranes do not flock
In the tall pines.

One Buddhist monk,
Eighty years old,
Has never heard
Of the world’s affairs.

Chia Tao (779-843)