This morning the red ant and larger
white-winged fly chase the frightened
large striped spider across the cold
floor. Why, what thirst for retribution
or what helpless fear, what protection?
It’s daylight, time to ask the Chinese
book 3,000 years old a river, the Tao,
runs through. Close your eyes, think
without thinking, shake, throw three
pennies six times. They form parallels,
an old ladder’s rising rungs, broken or
solid, yin or yang, often changing lines,
sixes, nines. Those say where your
life is reaching, that tree growing from
earth, developing itself the instant’s
second hexagram. For each cast fate
is a chosen oracle, from 64 shining with
sun or darkness, twilight at daybreak,
at evening. They tell the same story, do
right in this world, as the stream runs on
to the next and back again, the current
flowing always through you and all things.
Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher and editor. His fiction received the James D. Phelan award from the San Francisco Foundation, and his poetry the Prospero Prize from Sharkpack Review.