Sesshu ‘splashed-ink’ landscape, 1495

You want to imagine him at the beginning;
clear morning air surrounding him, the light
crisp within an arrangement precise, perfected.

Lifting his brush, selected to absorb,
ink made so dilute as to be almost invisible
and with a graceful ease – paint.

The surface is pure, untainted;
quickly and surely he describes thin veils
of shadowed rock rising towards
the sky like a newborn breath at dawn.

In Zen nothing does not mean alone,
and his flow becomes a notation of
the passing of eons, of his heritage,
a timelessness stamp of home.

When done he accepts this
momentary perfection and then looks
into an empty well splashed into infinity.