Koan
| 5 4 Koan What is leaf-shade on rock? is a question that has comforted and confounded since we were clambering down sharp slopes in the Missions last evening, falling in a way toward a falling sun. I saw the shadow— a flock of cowbirds lighting in field of cut-wheat, waves rising warningless from a still pond—before I saw its maker, an aspen missing half its leaves, because for balance I have to watch my feet. Something I had said hurt you, and now we were alternate sides of the earth, midnight and noon: in my ecstasy I even looked up to thank the sun for finding this tree, the tree this stone its canvas, while you sat hunched on a boulder saying keep going, I’ll catch up. As you would. As sorrow—unfathomable velocity!—always catches up with joy, or vice versa: so that this morning it does not surprise me to find you sunlit on the porch feeding rosehips to the cat, batting her paw away. Sometimes at certain heights or depths in this life together I have understood a oneness as transparent and as baffling. Your hand opens, reveals a rosehip. No, thank you. No? you ask, what is it? ...
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