Back again, this time with a little dribble I concocted while stuck in a six hour car ride to Ohio. It was late, and since Ohio is really flat, a full moon on the horizon looked huge to someone who lives in CT. So I fished around for paper and pencil and this is the product. Enjoy.
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A step up. Pause. Silent contemplation. A reflection on the water surface, sparkling red in the dying sunlight. A few feet further up the water tumbled violently over sharp rocks, sweeping away with swift rapids and turbulent eddies. Dangerously beautiful. The aching grief and futile rage were gone, replaced by a strange hollow stillness, a frightening calmness. Nothing left here now, but he was ready. Tired of the inconstant world, he would be free of everything: shame, guilt, sadness.
Night fell, blanketing the river in darkness, the water black and sinister. Beckoning. Above, a beautiful full moon. Softly whispered words,
Out of the dark
Into a dark path
I now
must enter:
Shine
on me from afar
Moon of
the mountain fringe!
A step up into thin air, and he plummeted down, sleeves billowing out behind him.
A thousand years later, Fujiwara no Sai sat quietly next to his host, gazing at a silver moon. Reaching a hand into a sleeve, he produced a flute. Bringing it to his lips, he blew softly, and a hauntingly beautiful song drifted across the land.
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Ta-da... Yeah, anyways the poem isn't mine. It was written during the Heian era of Japan by a woman named Izumi Shikibu. She wrote the poem on her death-bed, and it is said that the first two lines refer to a passage in the Lotus Sutra: 'Out of darkness we enter into darkness.'