Listening Deeply
by Dick Allen
Listening deeply,
sometimes—in another—you can hear
the sound of a hermit, sighing
as he climbs a mountain trail to reach a waterfall
or a Buddhist nun reciting prayers
while moonlight falls through the window onto an old clay floor,
and once in a while you find a child
rolling a hoop through the alleyways of Tokyo, laughing,
or a farmer pausing in a rice field to watch geese fly,
the thoughts on his lips he doesn’t think to say.
From Zen Master Poems. © Wisdom Publications, 2016.

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