The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao

I

Once the path was conceived
the ribbons were cut away.

There was a birth.

The grass was trod to mud, then gravel lain,
and gold leaf hammered into place under the stones.

The path is not perfectly straight,
but its intentions are clear as a seducer’s.

It bisects the rectilinear park diagonally,
penetrates the campus with inexorable forward dynamics.

Foreshadowed in all the other lines and straight routes in the vicinity,
it is the king of paths.

It’s daily crossed like London Bridge; it’s
taken again, and again, blindly, trustingly.

Because it begs its question.


II

At night the path is empty and the ends
join.
The park thinks, time
slows.

Like slugs, ghosts weave trails of
chaos too vague to
leave a daylit trace
and the pond leisurely seeks depth and depths
with complete lack of responsibility.