Stepping across Zig Zag Bridge
Lan Yuan, The Garden of Enlightenment
(Dunedin Chinese Garden)
By Sue Wootton
Yellow tassels sway under plum-plump lanterns.
Willow tresses sway. A single yellow lily blooms
and blooms in the lake, shaking. The lake's
a green scroll. The calligrapher's hand wavers.
Willow tresses, crimson plums, yellow tassels
waver in the lake. The rocks shake out a waterfall. It falls
into its shaking self, amongst
the rocking peaks where fire-fish ember lazy
trailing feathery fins, fine quills pulling green ink-water
through coiling and uncoiling clouds. The Pavilion's
overlapping clay-tile scales upcurl: arched carp,
leaping. In plunge, the same scales quiver. Pavilion;
illusion of Pavilion. Everything exists, and is
imagined. Everything is anchored, and shifts.
Lattice shadows shift, enclosing
and disclosing, fluidly disclosing. Stone-twists
open canyons. The longer one stays by the green water
the more one sees. So at full moon, the moon in the lake
rises in the lake, lilts on the lake, pours
through the hand. Fire-fish sip from its rim.
Sue Wootton is a Dunedin poet. Bring your lunch to the Dunedin Chinese Garden on Thursday February 25, 12.30pm-1.30pm to hear this and other poems performed by four of Dunedin's leading poets: Kay Mackenzie Cooke, Michael Harlow, David Howard, and Emma Neale.
