Home
Sunset. Behind the house
greening fields billow
to the blushing hills.
Near the steps
a purple crocus cups
the shrinking sun.
I am at home.
And yet
far away, woods murmur.
Dry leaves lift and lie again.
Windflowers nod beside the stream.
I want to be home.
Walking with Ryokan
I took up a monk's staff....
A single patched robe
And one bowl have sustained me all these years.
- Ryokan, circa 1800
I walk with my stick along the river.
On the other side in a green field
a blue tractor drags a tree trunk
black with rain along a line of gold
tobacco. Behind, the mountains dress
in tattered robes of cloud.
I think of you, Ryokan,
jingling home from the village,
your begging bowl full,
and my cup runs over
with color and the mountain mist.
About the poet: Linda Campany of Abingdon, a member of the Appalachian Center for Poets and Writers, is a former Zen Buddhist monk. She has won the Virginia Highlands Festival Creative Writing Contest in both poetry and essay categories. Her poems have been published in The Sow's Ear Poetry Review and The Clinch Mountain Review.
