By Charles M. Sumid      Copyright 2025      Written 2025

CHARLES:

standing beside a cascade

Listen—each drop finds its own path down,

yet together they carve one channel.

BASHŌ:

Water has no plan

but follows perfectly.

CHARLES:

See how it reads the stone’s weakness?

Not forcing,

just probing until it discovers

where the rock wants to split.

BASHŌ:

watching the spray

The waterfall teaches what we struggle to learn—

how to descend with grace.

CHARLES:

Centuries of falling carved this basin.

The water shapes its own resting place.

BASHŌ:

Patient architecture.

The stone yields its hardness

to persistent softness.

CHARLES:

kneeling by the stream

Here where it slows—

it braids itself around obstacles,

never fighting what it cannot move.

BASHŌ:

The wise water

embraces every stone as teacher.

CHARLES:

Each meander tells a story.

Spring floods cutting new channels,

summer drought revealing hidden bedrock.

BASHŌ:

touching the water’s edge

Winter will silence this conversation.

Spring will remember every word.

CHARLES:

pointing upstream

That fallen oak across the current—

in ten years gone,

the water will have written a new story.

BASHŌ:

The stream never argues with obstacles.

Only remembers.

CHARLES:

I love how it handles that boulder—

splitting, rejoining, creating quiet spaces.

BASHŌ:

placing a leaf in the current

Division and unity in the same breath.

CHARLES:

Water seeks the path of least resistance,

but sometimes chooses the longer route

to stay whole.

BASHŌ:

What seems like surrender

may be deeper wisdom.

CHARLES:

watching mist rise

The falling transforms into climbing.

Droplets becoming vapor,

rising to begin the cycle again.

BASHŌ:

The water that falls today

will rain tomorrow

on mountains not yet born.

CHARLES:

Each molecule a traveler—

clouds, rivers, roots, blood, tears.

The same water that filled ancient seas.

BASHŌ:

cupping water in his palms

This handful once touched every shore on earth.

CHARLES:

as mist touches his face

We spend so much energy

trying to direct our course,

but water shows us another way.

BASHŌ:

Following the natural gradient of the heart.

CHARLES:

Yielding without surrendering,

shaping without forcing.

BASHŌ:

walking upstream

Come—let us follow this teacher to its beginning.

CHARLES:

Where falling becomes rising,

where every ending contains its own renewal.