Koan: What is the true word?
It’s like asking what the true sunset is.
We’ve seen a few together—
all peach, a gathering of golds. Or geese
gliding down from three directions,
first above the dimming branches,
then mirrored in water,
as if to make themselves truer—
and we, having found each other
among the myriad things,
point at the details as if they’re strokes
of a pictograph—
the mercurial shore,
the lone duck,
the little houses across the reservoir
not yet lit
save one or two porch lights,
and the bright hole the sun bores in the far trees,
in the unending time
where we find ourselves,
and the truth we try to tell.
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