A Poem "Meditation: Sunset"

At sunset, on a stone bench,
there flashes into my eyes
a calmness summoned in an instant
by the melting of three layers of sunset--
purple, orange, and distant remnants of blue--
afternoon melting into evening melting into night
melting into sunset.
This bench is firm:
old and beaten by time, it rests
where it rests,
unharrowed by its own soft decay,
having disregarded any notion of staying
(for it once was marble).
In this way, the bench is a sage:
it rests, no pretensions behind it,
no illusions before it. I must wonder
whether this sage dreams of being a butterfly,
or dreams of mountains and grottoes,
or dreams of being a blossom in Buddha's hand,
passing to Bodhidharma.
The sunset
drips slowly away, melts into the tide
of night: the final flecks of blue
are at last gone, having been darkened
by some unseen brush, mixed with the softening orange
and blended with the purple into a whole,
one cohesive darkness which bears within it
dots of distant sunrises on other worlds.
Thus, night resolves itself.
Yet, I am here.
Yet I am here, or my outline
sketched in charcoal above the sage bench,
facing the sunset blended yin and yang,
exists, caught like a fly in fossilized amber.
The self and the sunset
merge in a moment
then are divided again
as night falls, and the bark of a distant dog
rouses me from my meditation,
and I go, having embraced
the evening Dao.