The rain has left six bowls upon the hill.
Each takes a sky, then lets it go.
No basin asks the others to be still;
no channel orders water not to slow.
I set a lantern where the path divides,
unlit, because the evening has enough
violet to show the copper sides
and every place the winter made them rough.
A leaf arrives without a destination.
It turns beside the lip,
then finds the opening in patience
and travels with the water, not the whip.
There is a kind of hurry that destroys
the thing it means to carry through the night.
I loosen one gate. The garden's noise
becomes a thread instead of breaking light.
Below, the bowl receives its weather.
Above, the empty stone begins to dry.
The work is neither less nor done forever;
it learns how much can pass, and still pass by.
Let moss keep what the hurried foot would squander.
Let shade be shade, without a name.
The pool is not a lesser wonder
because its silver came through other rain.
I will not call a promise finished water.
I watch the copper darken as it fills,
and leave a way between the stones.
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