Why
Are some icicles long
Some short?
-Onitsura-

We are poets and sages in so far as we
do not ask such questions, or rather ...
in asking them we expect no answer and
do not desire one.
To keep things in this state of wonder
and suspense, to want without desire to
love deeply without attachment, this is
the real part of all our living.
Then the different lengths of the icicles,
the different heights of wooden pilings,
the difference between the sun and the
moon, these things are of perpetual and
never-ending surprise, for ...

"A long thing is ...
the Long Body of Buddha;
A short thing is ...
the Short Body of Buddha."

-R.H.Blyth-
Haiku Vol4 Autumn/Winter