The weather was so perfect this afternoon — clear blue sky, refreshing breeze blowing out of the west, cool and delightful temperature — that I needed an excuse to get outside. I walked the three or four blocks over to Upstair Used Books. Ira, the owner of Upstair Used Books, has been working the library book sales, and he had a lot of new poetry.<\/p>\n
I saw a book titled Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry<\/em>, and pulled it out to look at it. Tucked inside there was a sheet of typing paper — the good stuff, thesis paper — folded in half and with a short unsigned poem centered and neatly typed on it:<\/p>\n Near the solstice, So I bought the book.<\/p>\n As I was paying Ira for the book, I showed him the poem tucked inside it. He read it over once. ” ‘Thunder beneath the earth…’,” he said.<\/p>\n “Yeah, like something out of the Yi Jing<\/em>,” I said. “That poem is really why I’m buying the book. Maybe I’ll frame it, the way it’s typed….”<\/p>\n ” ‘The moon almost full…’,” said Ira, reading the poem over again. ” ‘Bodes well.’ Yeah, I like it more the second time. Hey, would you make me a copy….” So I went out and made a photocopy and brought it back to him. An unsigned found poem — who could resist?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The weather was so perfect this afternoon — clear blue sky, refreshing breeze blowing out of the west, cool and delightful temperature — that I needed an excuse to get outside. I walked the three or four blocks over to Upstair Used Books. Ira, the owner of Upstair Used Books, has been working the library […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEverything sleeps, like
\nThunder beneath the earth.
\nThe passes are closed,
\nAnd the travelers rest.
\nLight flicker across
\nThe valleys below.
\nThe moon, almost full,
\nBodes well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n