It is said
Qi Ji, the hermit monk
scratched his poems
with a stalk of bamboo
onto the hides of his cattle
it is utterly unknown
what his audience thought of this
there are no records - but once,
a single bristle
flecked over
a herd of canvas
poems lived and changed
dependent
on the time of day
in the late afternoon
at the bottom
of Mount Zurong
Qi Ji waits
for the clouds to break
he waits for the rain
to accept his work
he waits for the rain
to begin again
