We meet and we part.
Coming and going–hearts like passing clouds.
Except for the marks of a frosty-hair brush,
human traces are hard to find.
~Ryokan*
visit The Daily Post to view or participate in Jen’s photo challenge: shadowed
*cited:
Sky Above, Great Wind
Kazuaki Tanahashi
the cloud-covered sky
is all open
the heart of takuhatsu
as it is–
a gift from heaven
~Ryokan*
*cited:
Sky Above, Great Wind
Kazuaki Tanahashi
toward thin ice
my shadow moves, moves
till it’s drowned
~Mitsuhashi Takajo*
*cited:
Far Beyond the Field
Makoto Ueda
cicadas at nightfall–
every face passes by
without speaking a word
~Ishibashi Hideno*
faces passing by
*cited:
Far Beyond the Field
Makoto Ueda
all moving things
come to an end:
a knotty willow
~Enshi*
shadow dancing
*cited:
Japanese Death Poems
Yoel Hoffmann
At last free,
at last I am a woman free!
No more tied to the kitchen,
stained amid the stained pots,
no more bound to the husband
who thought me less
than the shade he wove with his hands.
No more anger, no more hunger,
I sit now in the shade of my own tree.
Meditating thus, I am happy, I am serene.
~Sumangalamata*
*”Sumangala’s Mother,” the wife of a maker of hats and shade-umbrellas, was a member of the earliest community of women followers of the Buddha.
cited:
Women in Praise of the Sacred
Ed: Jane Hirshfield
An old man’s love,
while trying to forget it,
a winter rainfall.
~Buson*
*cited:
Haiku Master Buson
Ed., Y. Sawa & E. Shiffert
At night my sleep
embraces the summer shadows
of my life.
~Oto*
Fort Collins Museum of Discovery
*cited:
Japanese Death Poems
Yoel Hoffmann
A winter night!
The old image of the Buddha
should be the first thing burned.
~Buson*
*cited:
Haiku Master Buson
Y. Sawa & E. Shiffert
In the aging house,
crookedness of the door being straightened,
a spring-like winter day.
~Buson*
Old Town
*cited:
Haiku Master Buson
Y. Sawa & E. Shiffert
Lines
in the twilight mist
where they go I cannot see…
I envy the wild geese
only their voices trailing behind
~ Rengetsu-ni
words of old
whispered today by wind
in the reeds
~Shohaku
As I was stumbling around Photoshop, I found myself remembering a cartoon which pictured an overwhelmed student with a raised arm and the caption, “may I be excused, my head is full?”
That memory was followed by the remembrance of a meeting with a clinical supervisor who spoke of the importance of going back to the basics…so I exited Photoshop, found the original RAW image, and entered the realm of Lightroom…to begin again with the basic adjustment layers of:
I then did some reading about basic composition as a means to explore: To crop or not to crop?
As I pondered this question, it came to me that cropping this image would narrow the context…the story…as well as the invitation to imagine the various elements that came together to create this unique image—which, I believe cannot be recreated.
It is the various elements within this image that invites me to contemplate: How did this leaf come to embrace the grass? Or, was it the grass that embraced the leaf?
The evasiveness to my questions is reflected in the image’s various degrees of blurriness/sharpness and light/shadow and thus I find myself also wondering: Was the leaf captured? Imprisoned? Or, was it saved?
Jump on over to Robyn’s to join the One Four Challenge
The first three of December’s One Four Challenge
a meditative journey 
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