21 June 2020. Ynot as Tu Fu.
Only in the sense of the journey, which is at night, a sparse moon set hours ago, and still we can't rest. I meet him there, after a road tipped askew down cliffs, he's become a friend, and I wonder after his well being. What that might mean, really, in this time since we both left the Palace Ministries. The precincts of the capital overrun, he made his way north, the family by some miracle surviving there. A friend took him in, the children were given food. But now we're in the west--frontiers and borderlands, where strange armies roam wide, and the banners of war fly over every valley. Crossing mountains to the south, in flight--roads carved into the sides of cliffs. And now the moon has set, our thousand fears at that ferry...
Yes, it's always a boat--elegant and fragile--the long boards pegged together, following the curve of the wood. The boatman sang-out, laughing at seething waves. An outrigger sailing canoe, just half completed, and then the letter arrived announcing another journey, also far to the south...
A theater stage by the ocean. Set up with chairs looking back towards the bluffs. Friends and family in attendance, listening. Gene Price, afterwards, his encouragement for a vision of hope.
A waterfall of light, yes, light poured out of his eyes...
____
After reading Tu Fu's River-Swarm Crossing, translated by David Hinton.
Notes: The outrigger--a boat--building project I'd undertaken when I was fifteen. The letter--announcing an American Field Service scholarship to spend a year in Argentina. A theater stage--the band shell at the beach side stadium in Oceanside, California, where I gave the valedictorian address to the Class of1963. Gene Price--a close friend of my parents, he'd studied to be a concert pianist. I valued his articulate presence...
