You were a girl of satin and gauze <br />Now you are my mountain and waterfall companion. <br />Long ago I read those lines of Po Chu I <br />Written in his middle age. <br />Young as I was they touched me. <br />I never thought in my own middle age <br />I would have a beautiful young dancer <br />To wander with me by falling crystal waters, <br />Among mountains of snow and granite, <br />Least of all that unlike Po’s girl <br />She would be my very daughter. <br /> <br /> <br />The earth turns towards the sun. <br />Summer comes to the mountains. <br />Blue grouse drum in the red fir woods <br />All the bright long days. <br />You put blue jay and flicker feathers <br />In your hair. <br />Two and two violet green swallows <br />Play over the lake. <br />The blue birds have come back <br />To nest on the little island. <br />The swallows sip water on the wing <br />And play at love and dodge and swoop <br />Just like the swallows that swirl <br />Under and over the Ponte Vecchio. <br />Light rain crosses the lake <br />Hissing faintly. After the rain <br />There are giant puffballs with tortoise shell backs <br />At the edge of the meadow. <br />Snows of a thousand winters <br />Melt in the sun of one summer. <br />Wild cyclamen bloom by the stream. <br />Trout veer in the transparent current. <br />In the evening marmots bark in the rocks. <br />The Scorpion curls over the glimmering ice field. <br />A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets. <br />Thunder growls far off. <br />Our campfire is a single light <br />Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls. <br />The manifold voices of falling water <br />Talk all night. <br />Wrapped in your down bag <br />Starlight on your cheeks and eyelids <br />Your breath comes and goes <br />In a tiny cloud in the frosty night. <br />Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise. <br />Ten thousand years revolve without change. <br />All this will never be again.<br /><br />Kenneth Rexroth<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wheel-revolves/
