Root
From this feral garden I derive the formula of the Sun, a garrote of temporal beauty, a shy and endless awakening, a force of Love in the trembling earth, a soundless snow upon the darkness of birth; reality is that this is first a place of ashes un-wanton, broken and orange as a carrot of displacement, organic and see-through as a stalk of water, the ink upon the blueness of a traveling lake, the Zen Mountains unearthed from a greenness of night, the sea filled with boats made of clay, there is no frost on these stars, only the mortal wand of daylight spent in its absoluteness, the fragrant river bends with the wind, the softness of spent light, we return from this forsaken garden searching the herbs made of rain and mud, knowing only the root that does not bend, a quiet and clear route to freedom from this place it time's uncertain space.
Reprinted by kind permission of the Regents of the University of California,
Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Gift of Diane Walker Murray