<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\nIt\u2019s dharma<\/a> poetry week at the wild fox blog. Here\u2019s one from Jane Hirschfield<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n(who has quite a wonderful blog, \u201cMy Inner Edge,\u201d<\/a> that I\u2019ve been enjoying tonight):<\/span><\/div>\n<\/span><\/div>\nThink of those Chinese monks\u2019 tales:<\/span><\/div>\nyears of struggling<\/span><\/div>\nin the zendo, then the clink,<\/span><\/div>\nwhile sweeping up, of stone on stone . . .<\/span><\/div>\nIt\u2019s Emily\u2019s wisdom: Truth in Circuit lies.<\/span><\/div>\nOr see Grant\u2019s <\/span>Common Birds and How To Know Them<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n(New York: Scribner\u2019s, 1901)<\/span><\/div>\n\u201cThe approach must be by detour,<\/span><\/div>\nadvantage taken of rock, tree, mound, and brush,<\/span><\/div>\nbut if without success this way, use artifice,<\/span><\/div>\nthrow off all stealth\u2019s appearance, watchfulness,<\/span><\/div>\nlook guileless, a loiterer, purposeless,<\/span><\/div>\nstroll on (not too directly toward the bird),<\/span><\/div>\navoiding any gaze too steadfast;<\/span><\/div>\nor failing still in this, give voice to sundry whistles,<\/span><\/div>\nchirp: your quarry may stay on to answer.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\nMore briefly, try; by stymied, give it up, do something else.<\/span><\/div>\nLeave the untrappable thought, go walking,<\/span><\/div>\nideas buzz the air like flies; return to work,<\/span><\/div>\na fox trots by \u2013 not Hughes\u2019s sharp-stinking thought fox<\/span><\/div>\nbut quite real, outside the window,<\/span><\/div>\nwith cream-dipped tail and read-fire legs doused watery brown;<\/span><\/div>\nemerges from the wood\u2019s dark margin, stopping all thinking,<\/span><\/div>\nand briefly squats (not fox, but vixen), then moves along<\/span><\/div>\nand out of sight. \u201cEnlightenment,\u201d wrote one master,<\/span><\/div>\n\u201cis an accident, though certain efforts make you accident-prone.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\nThe rest slants fox-like, in and out of stones.<\/span><\/div>\n
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