DAWN CHILD
The dawn child sleeps
The mother keeps
Watch in the night
By dim starlight
A speckle fawn
Before the dawn
In silent past
Now hidden fast
A startled leap!
She quits the keep!
Dogs trail away
With yelp and bay
Day will soon fade
Night now is made
Fawn does not cry
Tear blinds no eye
Of one born wild
The human child
Will shed no tear
For one so near
C. R. Williams
This was a welcome change of pace from the Substack norm. Enjoyed floating along with the verse here.
I enjoyed 'Dawn Child'. Thank you for sharing.
A part of my enjoyment arose because you included dogs. That brought a smile to my face. Have you heard of 'koans'?
They are a Buddhist approach to figuring out how our lives are connected with the life of everything around us.
I'm currently in Mexico, and surrounded by dogs barking, yelping, howling and baying. And I came across the following koan:
https://www.pacificzen.org/library/koan/zhaozhous-dog-gg1-bs18/
Someone asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?”
“Yes,” replied Zhaozhou. “Then why did it jump into that bag of fur?”
“It knew what it was doing and that’s why it dogged.”
Another time someone asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?”
“No.”
“All beings have buddha nature. Why doesn’t a dog have it?”
“Because it’s beginning to awaken in the world of ignorance.”
So... conflict. The answer 'No' has a particular resonance with me, and so I am focused on that part of the koan. And it has inspired me to write some 'doggerel' too. ;-)
Here is one that I wrote:
When they howl, jostle, and bark, snark, snick or snee,
the dogs, oh those early morning dogs,
chase the clouds to new patches in the expanse of blue.
With quiet, the clouds settle, and with zen-like stillness
watch over, look down over, over see the agitated monk hoeing
east and west, north and south.
With a pause to wipe her brow’s sweat she glances up and
notices the clouds watching over her.
‘I’m looking for the bones of my ancestors!’
Quiet.
‘What?! Is that an error?’ she called up.
With no-answer stillness
she hears the scuffing and snorting sounds of dirt being tossed aside by a dog.
The monk turns to see behind her a dog digging enthusiastically
in one of the hoe tracks.
Then the dog paused.
He pushed its head down into the hole,
came up with a bone sticking out of his mouth.
Nope, two bones.
The dog paused to look at the human watching over him,
and with what looked like a smile, turned away,
ran away.
‘Just one! Just one!’ The monk called out, after the dog,
and gave the mutt chase, her hoe held high like the blunt lance of a de-horsed knight.
‘Just one!’
The blue continued to tango with the white
and the other dogs continued the music.
Again, thank you for sharing.