Looking at something so ordinary

Looking at something so ordinary

I don't know how to see it:

the heaped sleeve of a woman writing,

her words like a tapestry appearing

alongside her figure on the painted screen.

With the sound of the koto

the wind in the pines of the mountain peak

seems to communicate

- one sound opening into

the other.

With which note shall I begin,

she asks, and asking, chooses

neither windblown note

but a third sound, out of time,

like a door thrown open

between this light and her own.