On arriving at our new property the first time alone after purchase, after parking the car we look up to see on the hillside across from ours in the narrow valley are two lines of congregants all dressed in white and chanting. Apparently this ritual takes place every Sunday. At first we were disappointed; later we accepted there is no geographical place of refuge from humanity’s insatiable need to be always adding layers of complexity, the spinning wheel of samsara.
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chanting congregants in white
walking in single file
on ancient hill
who has heard it all before
and remains unmoved.
#1 1/12/2021
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This photo gives a better view of the hill from our parking area but before they got into two columns, chanting. Later they played music which sounded a little like Sunday school for adults because of so many well-known childrens’ songs in the mix.
A haibun is another Japanese poetic form consisting of an introductory prose piece followed by a complementary haiku-style verse. I learned about it today from https://naturalistweekly.com/2021/12/01/basho-the-narrow-road-and-haibun/, for which thanks.
baronbrasdor.art 
Great use of the haibun form! Thanks for sharing the link.
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The outdoors are an ideal place for contemplation. It’s not surprising Japanese nature was a taproot for so many of the haibuns and haikus that have come down to us from centuries past. Western poetry too — the Romantics and more — is seeded deeply with the notion of extraordinary reality lying just beyond the natural world, ready to be cupped gently and brought back to our world. It is not enough to be poetic, one must interface with the natural world in a way which is mutually productive to both.
— Catxman
http://www.catxman.wordpress.com
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Thanks for the comment. Nature, being natural (!), has no mental machinations, no agenda. Rather, the natural world is attuned to the space which mothers all and which we sometimes experience as presence. I try in poetry depicting real-world, especially natural, scenes to reflect that sense of presence.
That said, some poems juxtapose attitude or feeling within the context of a natural setting the two complementing each other somehow. This mirrors the way we are always balancing the inner and outer worlds we continuously experience simultaneously. And that complementarity also has a sort of presence, perhaps a presence of mood, or humanity.
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