Marilyn Higginson, Sunrise, Oil on Wrapped Canvas, 20″ X 24″
DISORDERED THOUGHTS NEAR DAWN (After Su Tung Po)
The shadow of an elm
runs down the moonlit street
like water down a hill.
The trees lose their leaves
with no regrets.
They await another season,
as time collects its debts.
But from where comes
infinite grace. Is it
from a mind or from
some other place?
Is there a science
to recognize its face?
Is it an illusion, which seems
to appear, then, as if
it had never been,
disappears without a trace,
like a childhood love,
and its forgotten dreams.
__________________
George Freek
Review by Ed Higgins
Su Tung Po is often wryly sardonic in observing the happenstances of life with penetrating questions. As Freek does here. There is no answer to the seeming illusion of infinite grace as the speaker here reflects on its possible-not-possible which then disappears without a trace. One can only concur with the sad truth of Freek’s ending simile: like a childhood love, and its forgotten dreams. Indeed so!