from Livingston Suite
Maybe I'm wrong. After years of practice
I learned to see as a bird but I refuse
to do it now, not wanting to find the body.
I traveled east to our cabin in Michigan
where I learned that my Zen master, Kobun
Chino Sensei, drowned in a cold lake trying to save
his three-year-old daughter who also drowned.
I make nothing of this but my mind suddenly
rises far upward and I see Kobun in his black
robes struggling in the water and he becomes
a drowning raven who then frees himself for flight,
his daughter on the lake's bottom rising to join him.
What could the vision mean but a gift? I said
maybe I'm wrong. The Resurrection is fatally correct.
__________________
Jim Harrison
Livingston Suite
Limberlost Press, 2005
