Quiet Night Thoughts

I wake, and moonbeams play around my bed
Glittering like hoar-frost to my wandering eyes;
Up towards the glorious moon I raised my head,
Then lay me down — and thoughts of home arise.

The Tang period poet Li Bai was famous in his time as a poet and a practitioner of the Dao. He was also, like many of his literary colleagues, a big fan of wine. A poem I was reading (and thought to publish here) last night, has Li dancing with his shadow and the moon in a wine-infused frolic. The one above, Quiet Night Thoughts, is a poem probably known to all Chinese.

How many of us have been far from home and reminded by some phenomena, a flower, a word, a smell, or, in this case, the play of moonbeams, of our home? Li is likely in the south of China and the moonlight, resembling in his waking state, a hoar-frost, resonates with him, producing the kinds of memories, of feelings, that arise in all of us.