Upon a dark river

They were like children released from school, boisterous and noisy like puppies tumbling over one another. There was much banter about who was carrying the smallest pack and therefore who would not get fed. Abbot Tamura was deemed to be the shirker but, though he was twenty years older than the others, they all knew that he was stronger and would outlast any of them on the rough hills and steep trails no matter how little or how much he carried.

Once underway, silence fell upon the group – the silence of the journey, the silence of the forest, the silence of interiority.

The green of the forest enveloped the five tiny humans, their thick straw sandals silent on the leaf litter and rock. The forest was a temple of towering trees and green moss, hanging lichen, ferns curled like unfurling galaxies, tiny white flowers on tiny green plants. Occasionally a startling purple fungus pushed up through the fallen leaves.

… and while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and understood more than I saw. In the centre grew a mighty tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

Fallen trees lay like moss-covered dragons or crumbled in piles of bright, red wood returning to the earth.

The men crossed many clear, rocky streams; tree roots groping from the banks. Once a tiny grey bird hopped on the path in front of them – innocent and intent and trusting. There were waterfalls like white lace sliding over dark, slick rocks; wide river bottoms of thick grass and waving seed heads.

The first night they camped in a grassy clearing in the forest, sleeping beneath a cloth they strung between small saplings and held down with rocks.

The second night – and it was this that Brother Akimitsu remembered and treasured the rest of his life – they found no open space and stopped among the thick trees beside a river.

There was enough space and enough fallen wood for a fire to cook on and gather around.

There, as the evening darkened, Brother Akimitsu stood and watched the river – it rippled shallowly over rocks, it pooled in shadowed bends.

A tree trunk, fallen from above, lay angled down into the water – moss-covered – and on it stood two ducks, small and smoky blue.

They bobbed into the water where they moved with surprising speed. They stood on rocks on the river’s edge.

Brother Akimitsu stood in the gloom: the sound of water – all else stillness and silence and this flash of life.

In the morning, Abbot Tamura blew on the embers of the fire and they added enough wood to heat a pannikin of tea before dawn devotions.

Years after, lost in the neon canyons of the city, swept along in a world of millions, of madness, of rage, Brother Akimitsu would think that somewhere far away in the forest upon a dark river blue ducks still swam.

Dhiraja