Mi Fu Bowing to the Stone
They say he was mad. Before visiting
his flesh and blood he would pay his respects
by bowing to his adopted elder
brother in the garden: a great huddled
boulder of gray weathered stone.
People round here are polite. When I came
to the mountain and changed the grass hut’s name
from The Laughing Place to Stone Nest Dojo,
no one minded, they laughed, as if I were
another old Madman Mi.
We sit together, Mi and I, and share our art,
sketching the fog with brushes heavy with fog.
Note: Mi Fu (米黻) — or Mi Fei (米芾) — (1051-1107) was an eccentric Chinese painter, poet, and calligrapher of the Song Dynasty, and friend of Su Dungpo (Su Shi). As a painter, he was known for his misty landscapes. As a subject for painting, he is often depicted bowing to a huge stone in the garden, which he was known to address as his elder brother.
Richard Collins is abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he leads Stone Nest Zen Dojo. His recent poetry, which has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and a Pushcart Prize, appears in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, MockingHeart Review, Pensive, Sho Poetry Journal, Think, Urthona: Buddhism and the Arts, and Willows Wept Review. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press). a translation of Taisen Deshimaru’s Autobiography of a Zen Monk (Hohm Press), and In Search of the Hermaphrodite (Tough Poets Press, 2024).
Amethyst Review 