Diamond Mountain

Wind blows.
Rattles an invocation
two thousand years old
from bronze temple bells.

Brushes a susurrus
from ten thousand oak leaves.

Draws from their branches
the moaning
of two hundred year old wood,
the dry sound
of a long-forgotten oboe.

Causes a seventy year old man
on a slatted bench
to tug the scarf across his chest.

Wind drops,
slips back
into eternal silence
of measured decay.
Wind undefiled
speaking in many voices.

Diamond Mountain is
one hour high,
one hour wide,
one hour deep.
Every hundred years
a small bird comes
and rubs its beak.
When the whole mountain
is quite worn away,
the first second of Eternity
has passed.