for Tao Yuan Ming & Bill & Michael

What is a thousand years
among friends? Or the distance of mountains and seas?

Once, among the wild mountains
of China, three men laughed
at a tiger's roar, swept suddenly beyond all philosophy.
Or so the legend goes.

A temple was built to commemorate
their joy . . .

Thinking back to all the nonsense
my words have framed, I must laugh again, both encouraged and ashamed.

We, too, have known a lyric warning
that often comes trembling in our bones,
as if we might outlast ourselves,
fused in the non-doings
and simple gestures of life
returning in its passage to the sea.

What does time and distance
have to do with life?

There is nothing apart from us.
The temple and the laughter are one.

We possess a powerful emptiness.