Flying birds
Floating clouds
Falling rain
Illuminating sun
Reaching up to it, curiously
The hand returns, sky-handed
Post Script
The poem begins with things moving freely through the open: birds, clouds, rain and sunlight. A curious hand reaches toward them but cannot carry any of them away.
It returns sky-handed, a turn on empty-handed. The character 空 joins sky and emptiness, allowing the hand to return without an object but not without the sky. Emptiness here is not a deficiency. It is the openness in which reaching, sky and hand meet.
Image: 空, with meanings of sky and emptiness.
Primitive Joe 