“Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end – tonight’s moon.”

He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.

Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?

Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water – A deep resonance.

An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.

How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers.

Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.

Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.

The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.

The moon is brighter since the barn burned.

Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.

Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps’ nest.

Summer grasses — all that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams.

Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.

Learn the rules, and then forget them.

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and you do not learn.

Don’t imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

The world can never understand me unless they all fall in love with you too.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.

A fraction of an ounce of kindness from you was enough for me to fall.

When the leaves begin to fall, I find myself returning to old playlists in hopes that I can feel you holding my hand, or kissing me goodnight, or hear you singing my name into songs and blueing when it makes no sense.

Love slandered the heart, we fumbled gracefully, we fell in love with the end from the start.