The bamboo plant, an essential element of Japanese painting, has a life span of only a decade, dying when it flowers.
—Little History of Landscape Painting
Stand of green bamboo:
hollow-jointed flute whose leaves
are lances; stems, turtles
cowering, shell to
shell; blossoming white, world-wide,
then gone, in one
superlative spring;
o mother of paper, o father
of pen, o teacher
of all we need know
on earth—beauty’s the greatest
distance between faults.