08

This body's existence is like a bubble’s

may as well accept what happens

events and hopes seldom agree

but who can step back doesn't worry

we blossom and fade like flowers

gather and part like clouds

worldly thoughts I forgot long ago

relaxing all day on a peak.



— Stonehouse, translated by Red Pine in The Mountain Poems Of Stonehouse, Copper Canyon Press

Thank you for calling The Botanarchy Hotline. The Botanarchy Hotline is medicine disguised as a poem, delivered through the portal of your phone. It’s a ham-radio séance between you and the living Earth, for those ready to be bewildered back to life.

The transmission at the end of your telephone line is Episode 8: Relaxing All Day On A Peak. It’s the first flush of summer, the air is thick with cottonwood confetti, and today we’re doing the hardest thing of all: absolutely nothing.

This week’s poem and idleness transmission comes from Master Shiwu — also known as Stonehouse, which is exactly the kind of name you get if you spend your life in a cave writing poems that double as instructions for how to vanish into stillness and stay there forever.