“Poetry uses the most ancient and universal of all languages, gesture, more than does prose. From gesture it is but a short way, if any way at all, to dance.” ~from Arthur Cooper’s Introduction to Li Po and Tu Fu.
Can I out-wait the Blue Heron? Be more patient than it than the fish? Can I become the water that passes beneath his smokey plumes? Can I carry the fish to the heron’s view—just a flash of movement will do. Can I bring myself and the fish to same still green water? Heron has it’s keen face away from my inquiring ideas. And then turning and stepping in the deliberate way that only hunters and Daoists know, head leading out to scan the water yet unplied by feet, spear poised to each gentle step, anticipating movement stirred up from below, herding its meal in.
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