Doug Anderson: Anonymous from the Han Dynasty

I have been your scribe now almost fifty years
and soon I’ll be replaced by a younger man

and you’ll let me live out my old age
in a cottage in the hills as you did old Lin.

I have finished your inventory of the armory
set it down and sent it to you although

you cannot read. You have a concubine who can
and she’ll read it to you and you’ll be comforted.

I lied, you do not have that many spears,
but it won’t matter. There is no one now

to contest your power. Therefore I’ll meditate.
What a relief to sit by the waterfall 

and let my mind go like this, each thought
a bubble rising from the bottom of a pond

where I imagine the bright leaves floating above,
like everyone who knows that death is near.

Copyright 2020 Doug Anderson