Not necessarily a haiku

This evening on the way home on the bus I was reading a wonderful book called The Zen Art Book. It's unique in its approach to artworks by Zen masters. The book has 2 authors: one an art historian -- Stephen Addiss -- and the other a Zen abbot -- John Daido Loori. They each contribute a paragraph about each artwork in the book. Addiss writes about technical and art historical details of each piece while Loori concentrates on its context in Zen practice. (If you're interested in the book, definitely check out the version called The Zen Art Box as well.)

In any case, as our bus crossed the 15/501 bridge over the Haw River I read about a scroll featuring this Zen koan:

"The bridge flows, the water does not flow."

From the bus we could see 4 swimmers splashing their way toward the bank, just above a man-made waterfall that spans the whole width of the river there.



the Haw River flows east
swimmers flowing east-northeast
our bus flies south
with the bridge