The Zen poems written right before our eyes

This Zen poem about geese flying over a lake had a revelatory effect on me when I first read it at 17:

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection.
The water has no mind to receive their image.

And yet the reflection happens, and the to-gasp-for beauty is there for the beholding. Like frosting, in other words, on life's cake, courtesy of physics and physiology.

I'm constantly being figuratively stopped in my tracks by similar visions of inordinate beauty that randomly occur before my very eyes. For instance, I was walking down a long hallway in an office building one day, and ...

That lean Indian woman striding purposefully past me: Can she possibly comprehend her hair? A single waist-length braid swinging with every step like a black satin pendulum, completing every sweep with a fetching flick.

And if that lovely sight in itself were not enough, the hallway's overhead pot lights ...

took turns forming bands of sheen that slowly descended from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck as she passed from light to light.

You don't have to be "baked" to tune into this stuff. All you have to do is look.

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