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Photo by Linda Gould

Autumn Song

by Margaret Chula
     I sit alone eating a sandwich, enjoying the chilled beauty of the Sento Gosho Palace grounds in Kyoto. An old woman in kimono gazes out at the pond with her back to me. I watch her shoulders rise as she inhales to chant Noh. Her posture changes as she leans forward and then backward like a rag doll. If you couldn’t hear the singing, you would think she was mad. Her plaintive song carries me back centuries to Buddhist temples, priests, samurai, and ghosts. 
     Lost in the depths of her chanting, I watch the light play on fallen leaves, wind blowing a leaf back and forth—until the world becomes hazy. The last of the autumn birds join in as the chorus for this outdoor Noh play. I am the only audience, even though the woman performs with her back to me. When she leaves, she walks towards me, and bends to pick up a red leaf.
​     I nod and she nods back. 
​

cricket song
last rays of sunlight
on the cold bench

Margaret Chula has published twelve collections of poetry including, most recently, Perigee Moon. Her first haiku collection, Grinding my ink, received a Haiku Society of America book award and One Leaf Detaches, a Touchstone Award. She has been featured speaker and international workshop leader, as well as serving as president of the Tanka Society of America and as Poet Laureate for Friends of Chamber Music. Living in Kyoto for twelve years, Maggie now makes her home in Portland, Oregon, where she hikes, gardens, and creates flower arrangements for every room of the house. Visit her at: www.margaretchula.com    
Use and/or duplication of any content on White Enso is strictly prohibited without express and written permission from the author and/or owner.

The Forester by Lloyd Morgan

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Photo: Linda Gould

​Fair-weather hikers fail to hear
Tanzawa's cloudline chimes.
They clash a stone atop the cairn;
dominion stamped, they downward tread
in laughter - easy peak to climb! -
And slow trains back to warmth and bed. 
All fear the jaws of mountain glades
Where primal forces linger.
Mute lyric of insensate shades
calls deep beyond the moors:
one million splintered fingers
rise in ritual over forest floors
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Photo: Linda Gould
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​through trailless tracts of frozen pine.
The old gods braided misty secrets
through these rain-clad shrines;
true pilgrims might reclaim
the savage patterns wrought in cedar,
​
and ululate the mountain's wild refrain.

Photo: Tim Gould
Lloyd Morgan is an educational content creator whose writing seeks to position human experience within the framework of the natural world. He can usually be found anywhere but home – most likely on a rugby pitch, half-way up a mountain, or bothering Kanagawa’s motorists on his beloved bike, Kintarō.
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