Chris Ellery
November 8, 2026
Can you care for the people and rule the country
And not be cunning?
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Have you noticed
in these cool mornings
how far the sun
has moved from summer?
If you say as little
as a turning leaf
you may be thought
inscrutable.
Just hold a flower
until someone smiles.
Perhaps a marigold.
Religions and revolutions
are started with far less
fuss
than a red leaf makes
on a windy day.
Gandhi would not allow
his wife
to receive penicillin
but took quinine himself
for malaria.
Don’t explain.
Don’t tell anyone
what you’re thinking.
This is what I mean:
inscrutable.
Sometimes
I can imagine
myself
sitting in mud
on the shore of October,
listening to the waves
as Jesus, joyous and hopeful,
preaches from the sea.
Self-control is called
“the mysterious virtue”—
forty days in a desert,
the Mount of Olives—
but as far as I know
Jesus never slept
with naked women
to test his power.
Fu Xi, archetype
of emperors,
saw nature
as a book of changes.
He married his sister.
They created humans,
music,
and the eight trigrams.
The sound of water
lapping the hull.
The sun a marigold.
Gandhi served
the British Empire
in the Boer War
before he freed a nation.
Jesus healed a deaf-mute
with spit, pulled a coin
from a fish,
and taught on a mountain.
Mao destroyed
the ancestral shrine
of Confucius.
Confucius answered
with the silence
of a red leaf
falling
on a mountain.
The mountain
is stillness,
the mountain
is the third son.
I also
am a third son.
Can you hear?
That’s all I’m saying.
