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| Rockery with Waterfall Lan Su Chinese Garden - Portland, Oregon |
Seeing an Old Friend Off
On a Summer Evening
Lan Su Chinese Garden—Portland, Oregon
After Wei Feng
Waterfall is flowing.
Summer air is still.
Over tea, our talk about Li Po
and Du Fu lasts long.
How eloquently Wei Feng put it when he said:
Poetic minds complete the greater elegance.
Cicadas keening, crickets chirping,
we pass the hours, dawn till dusk,
with ease.
Infrequent visits
make parting even harder.
Will lakes and mountains find us enjoying
the quiet pool of one another's
company again?
The snowmelt of age—
who can restrain it?
Though I close my gate
securely behind you,
years still enter
and leave.
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| Daniel Skach-Mills |
A 2026 Pushcart Prize nominee, Daniel Skach-Mills’s poetry is forthcoming in The Pensive Journal and Wild Roof Review. His book, The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems, was a 2012 Oregon Book Award finalist. A former Trappist monk, Daniel lives with his husband in Portland, Oregon, where he served for 15 years as a docent at Lan Su Chinese Garden. He was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in 2024.
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