Reading Basho’s Travel Sketches

Although it’s summer I drink hot tea
To stay awake long enough to finish reading
Basho’s travel sketches.  Wherever
He goes, he is moved by his experience of things:
Visits to ruined temples, sleeping in barns,
sharing a room innocently with two prostitutes;
Even his sadness at missing the full moonAt Kashima Shrine, or falling off his horse
Crossing Support-Yourself-On-A-Stick Pass.
How his warm eye must have brightened finally
Under the brim of his worn out hat
As he beheld at last the wild cherry blossoms of Yoshino.

“Eternity,” he always seemed to be saying, “is just
Being somewhere with all your heart.”