Dancing Horses

I see poems at night.
They print themselves out before me
in a high distant place.
Each time they arrive I lean in,
try to read what they say,
glean some of their meaning.
But a thick veil has fallen over by mind
and all I know is the singular stance
of each letter and each word,
their typewritten font
etched boldly on a paper night sky.
Each letter is like a proud horse
prancing over the pages of a dream.
And somewhere in the distance
rides the vague beautiful carriage of an idea.

I am not a painter. I do not speak Japanese.
But I know these words in my bones.
I hear their rat-a-tat in the bamboo grove,
feel their silky sway on my skin.
I swallow them, stumble over them,
press them into my palms.
I walk through the swoosh of the winding path
past the blooming lotus and the pebbled stream
to the place called Ochaya, or teahouse.
I step onto the wooden plank porch
Where I move inside the wind
And know at once, mono-no-a-wabi,
Japanese for "ahhhhhness."