Our log home is small and simple-
We host no elegant affairs.
Some summer mornings my daughter and I
pick huckleberries for pancakes.
A sniff of the cedar air
braces me for my job in the city,
and during the ferry crossing I read a book
from the stack in the bedroom.
This morning I had coffee with my friend Henry, who told me of going through a box of photos of past relationships. He threw a few away, kept a few, and talked to his wife about the whole thing. One form of wisdom has to do with how we cherish the old and precious in a way that nourishes the vastly different now.
Han-Shan’s poem:
A thatched hut is home for a country man;
Horse or carriage seldom pass my gate:
Forests so still all the birds come to roost,
Broad valley streams always full of fish.
I pick wild fruit in hand with my child,
Till the hillside fields with my wife.
And in my house what do I have?
Only a bed piled high with books.
(translated by Burton Watson)
