On a well-trodden forest path

How many moons and suns
have set and risen on you

before
you appeared to my eyes
this afternoon?

What joy and pain do you hold
from all those
who have come before me?

Perhaps a monk who passed through in serene meditation.
Perhaps a gleeful bandit who hid in your shadows.
Perhaps a fishmonger plying his basketed wares.
Perhaps a tearful mother in search of her boy.
Perhaps a samurai who retreated to lick his wounds.
Perhaps a lover rushing to his love at dusk.

I stand on your threshold 
and wonder
if a step into your komorebi

will let me bathe
in your stream of time
and become them all at once.

I take a deep breath,
and step forward.


[3:51 pm, 25th November, 2022,
Somewhere outside Kamakura.]