So quiet it's as if the world has stopped.
Rearranging a lower bookshelf, a thin volume slid out, which
got opened to a random page.
These are the words that leapt out:
December sun seeps into the woods
orange yolk over bare limbs
drips into a grove
where woodpeckers
tap tiny solos
a net cast
in the wake of the day
Chinese monarch King Wen
tells us the wanderer can progress in little things
when the source of light is farthest from the earth
and bends the prism
like a bow
and he finds himself
surrounded by woodpeckers
tapping out their eternal question
how to hold
interwoven rhythms
in a net of changing light
~ ~ Paul Pines
Excerpt from Book Two: The Absent One
in Divine Madness (Marsh Hawk Press, 2012).
