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Koan: What is the true word?

Ye Chun

Today 5:00 am

Illustration by Tim Robinson.

Bluesky

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 otheramong the myriad things,

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point at the details as if they’re strokesof a pictograph—the mercurial shore,the lone duck,

the little houses across the reservoirnot 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.

Ye Chun


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