The Teaching of the Tsue

You don’t buy
    you don’t hoard
        happiness
            in this world
you share* good fortune
    you share loss
        as a people
            a people among you
that is the lesson
            we teach by example
singly we are straws
                in the wind
together even straws
            can make a structure
    weak as it is
        weak as it is
    together

*not literally
    not literally
we but walk in shadows

Verbal account of a sailor, survivor of a ship wrecked near a remote inlet on the coast of B.C., who sojourned among the inhabitants for many years until found delirious in a canoe off the land, dying in a few days.


mmv