A Poem For Today - I Was Reading A Poem

[kdick...@aol.com]

I Was Reading A Poem

I was reading a poem by Ryōkan about a leaf, 

and how it showed the front and the back as it 

fell, and I wanted to call someone — my wife, 

my brother — to tell about the poem.

And I thought that maybe my telling about the 

poem was the front of the leaf and my silence 

about the poem was the back.

And then I thought that maybe my telling and 

my silence together were honestly just the front 

of the leaf, and that the back was something 

else, something I didn’t understand.

And then I thought that maybe everything I 

understood and everything I didn’t were both 

actually just the front of the leaf — so that the 

totality of my life was actually just the front of 

the leaf, just the one side — which would make 

the other side my death. . . .

Unless my life and death together were really 

still only the front of the leaf?

I had left the branch. I was falling.

I was loose now in the bright autumn air.

- David Rutschman 

[Isabel Torres-Carrilho]

wonderful

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