The Floating Things

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yü, Poem 8

The name of a thing
is not the thing.

A jade tree stands
at courtyard's front,
yet leaves that drop from it
are not hard stones
that can be carved
into dragons and lions.

They say the grass
is strewn with gems
when frost kisses it.
I reach for them
and my wet hand
is none the richer.

"To flower" means
making something new,
yet wilted peonies,
and stiff chrysanthemums
shame the garden,
like crones who came
to beg, and never left.

The moon, they say,
is full again.
Was it not full before?
Is this year's light
that shines from it
a newer thing, or just
the same old radiance,
shed from a tattered robe
in the night sky?

And if a thing's attributes
are not themselves
things in themselves,
moon just moon,
and flowers just flowers,
what thing is Youth
if pulled apart
from years and bodies?

Can Heaven grant us
this thing we most crave:
to age not
and to be young forever?