Zen Plums in Red Wheel Barrows

Moonlight slants through
The vast bamboo grove:
A cuckoo cries

Basho (17th C. Japan)


Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.


This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams (20th C. New Jersey)

Shadows, Stars and Light

"The stars about the beautiful moon again hide their radiant shapes,
when she is full and shines at her brightest on all the earth"

Sappho (a long time ago...)


"Shadows cast by the street light
under the stars,
the head is tilted back,
the long shadow of the legs
presumes a world taken for granted
on which the cricket trills"

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)