Wang Wei's beloved snow sits prepared. A saucer of crushed oyster shell. He looks out the window, pulls a screen across summer. All morning he renders the peaks, calcified by the skull-bone stroke. Each fissure, each cleft adds dignity to rock, small resting places on the long way up.
Crystals blow in from the west.
Remote, the plains open where one could stretch out forever. He goes to his cot in afternoon. By four o'clock, the footpath appears he'd pondered for days. Tracking the followers, he paints their mountain retreat, dim as a cave with a bell at its heart. Few leaves hang coldly to the maple.