AFTER HAN-SHAN’S POEM #46
No one lives forever.
Death will get us all, you know.
The biggest fellow you’ve seen is
soon nothing but a cup of dust.
The dead can never see the sun,
yet every spring grass grows green.
As I walk my sadness, sometimes
the sound of wind in the pines
is about enough to kill me.
Tom Montag’s books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. His poem ‘Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain’ has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns.
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