Hello All,
I am hosting my first online
poetry workshop for non-poets.
It is called
COME TO YOUR SENSES.
It will be offered monthly
beginning Sunday, Mar. 16, at 2pm PST.
THE ASSIGNMENT*
The Zen teacher
gave out twigs,
pebbles and flowers.
His students were to
draw each of them
one at a time
but not progress
from one to the next
until the drawing
was identical to
the item they had placed
on the page
before them. The only
instruction was: Draw
what you see, not
what you don’t see.
The teacher went around
the room examining
the student work. Mostly
what he saw was
what the students
hadn’t seen but drew
anyway. These students
had to start over. Later
in the day the teacher
came upon a young woman.
There was only the white lily lying
on the blank page.
She hadn’t drawn anything.
She was crying.
Why are you crying,
the teacher asked:
The flower is dying, she said.
The flower is dying!
She, unlike the other students,
did not have to start over.
She was her drawing.
She was the flower dying.
*Inspired by a story told by James Finely
in his podcast, Turning to the Mystics (31;57)
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