Little House Book and a Poem

Japan

Today I pass the time reading

a favorite haiku,

saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating

the same small, perfect grape

again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it 

and leave its letters falling

through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.

I say it in front of a painting of the sea.

I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,

then I say it without listening, 

then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,

I kneel down on the floor 

and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton

temple bell

with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating

pressure of the moth 

on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,

the bell is the world

and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it into the mirror,

I am the heavy bell

and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,

you are the bell,

and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown

from its line

and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

Billie Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room