If you are to deconstruct
your tent (a Eureka!) when morning
comes, be attentive to the task
for it has been a hermitage.
Act as if you awoke not alone —
but with Bashô —
opened your eyes and saw
the moon is a field of clover.

Meditate on each metal stake
that marked the quadrant
of your imperial dreams — of the old pond,
a frog jumping as you pull them up.

The sand — you hear it — releases
its hold on your patch
in the pines.

                     You lift the fly
and it floats in a dragonfly breeze.

Wind stirs: You will need
the wings of a crane today.

                                             When the
step comes to collapse the graphite
framework of your benevolent abode,
you will think to yourself,
I’ve worn out my body on journeys.

But how easily the thin green sheath
folds and rolls.

                      Slip it into
its soft nylon case and you believe
you hear me whispering: Traveler
you can call me — first rain of winter.

What the Zen poet said is true,
We can get lost on a muddy road
in rainy season.

                      Because I have
pitched many tents, and struck them, too;
I know you can also be found, my little cuckoo.

Where you sleep, the grass is always green.