A poem by Charles Wright

...who is my friend Eddie's favorite... (maybe I am not writing, but I am finding writing that I like - does that count for something? it's four in the morning and hot, really, really hot, and Briar is not doing well with the heat, and I can hear the crickets like we're living in Savannah, and all I want is to be lying on a nice warm rock with the cool blue water of the Oslo fjord lapping at my feet, staring at honest, unfettered blue skies).

After Reading T'ao Ch'ing, I wander Untethered Through the Short Grass

Dry spring, no rain for five weeks.
Already the lush green begins to bow its head and sink to its
knees.
Already the plucked stalks and thyroid weeds like insects
Fly up and trouble my line of sight.
I stand inside the word here
As that word stands in its sentence,
Unshadowy, half at ease.
Religion's been in a ruin for over a thousand years.
Why shouldn't the sky be tatters,
lost notes to forgotten songs?
I inhabit who I am, as T'ao Ch'ing says, and walk about
Under the mindless clouds.
When it ends, it ends. What else?
One morning I'll leave home and never find my way back—
My story and I will disappear together, just like this

-- Charles Wright

(with thanks, as always, to Garrison Keillor)