I slipped the book into my jacket pocket
and climbed the west slope to the hilltop
where the air is warmer just after sunset
as the light fades over the indigo ridge
and the shadow of the earth closes over me.
The dog is late to arrive, busy as she is
digging for voles in young goldenrod,
now loping up the path to join me
warm and strong against my thigh
with mud on her nose.
The sky goes pink in fanlike rays
across high clouds I did not know were there.
Copper coins will pass to other hands,
the ancient poet wrote, What will be left to show?
Mosquito at my ear, the answer's here.
—with a line by Su Tung-p'o, 1073 AD
