Don’t waste time
thinking you are right,
thinking you are wrong,
thinking you do,
or don’t belong.
Don’t waste time
navigating spiraling subterranean tunnels,
or winding mountain trails,
standing at some peak,
admiring valleys below your feet.
Don’t waste time
waiting or hoping
for the path to change,
or moving a fallen branch
that is in the way.
Don’t waste time
dreaming of a tall cypress,
rooted in heaven and earth,
or crisp, cold currents
in a turbulent mountain stream.
Don’t waste time
reading of the tortoise and the hare
to the little one beside you,
who knows how the race will end
and stops you at every page.
Don’t waste time
on a wild sheep chase
after the little one sleeps,
or mending a fence
in a quiet field.
Don’t waste time
being early to bed, missing Aurora,
or late to rise,
slumbering through the dewdrop green
and a little bird saying, “tweet!”
Don’t waste time
beneath the mango trees,
where fruit thuds through green leaves
and trickster monkeys laugh
at your silent retreat.
Don’t waste time
following ducks with red faces
waddling on webbed feet
between sticks and grasses
down the bank of the muddy bayou.
Don’t waste time
watching an undulating flag
answer the breeze,
or feeling the small hairs on your skin
wave in reply.
Don’t waste time
walking alone
in the evening
just to hear the cicadas
saw through the dark.
Don’t waste time
watching a sunset sift
through dandelion clocks,
or lazy water curling
in eddies within eddies.
Don’t waste time
noticing the clouds
crawling over a bridge,
while runners and cyclists
pass at the pace of the world.
Don’t waste time
reflecting on birds
flying beneath your feet
through a rain puddle
holding trees and sky.
Don’t waste time
ruminating on
the biggest moon ever
rising again
in the rearview.
Don’t waste time
arranging flowers
or smoothing white sheets
once warmed
by ordinary dragons.
Don’t waste time
arranging dark symbols
within or without
the morning silence.
Don’t waste time
writing a poem,
or worse,
reading one.
Post Script
The refrain echoes Dōgen’s urgent warning not to waste time. Yet the poem asks what wasting time actually means, and who stands apart from life to judge one moment worthwhile and another useless.
Moving a branch, mending a fence, reading the same story again, watching ducks enter muddy water, or arranging words in the morning are not inherently meaningful or meaningless. The point is intimacy within the action: meeting what is happening so completely that the imagined distance between the doer and the deed begins to soften.
The poem also carries something of Ryōkan’s playful spirit. A child interrupts a familiar story, trickster monkeys laugh at a solemn retreat, and a little bird answers the rising sun with “tweet!” The wild sheep chase quietly nods toward Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, where pursuit becomes strange, elusive, and difficult to separate from the one pursuing. Such moments resist our solemn ideas about spiritual accomplishment. Nothing special needs to be added to ordinary life before we can enter it wholeheartedly.
The photograph was taken during a night walk in downtown Houston. Suspended lights, old trees, grass, buildings, and darkness briefly formed one intimate field. Walking had no purpose beyond walking, looking, and being there.
Image credit: Night walk in downtown Houston, Texas (2026), Joseph Patterson.
Primitive Joe 