How Can We Ever Lose Interest in Life?

(The Gardener by Paul Cézanne, 1839-1906,
French Post-Impressionist artist)

We have come to the end of our month of poems about spring. Those verses were in anticipation. Now the year’s at the spring and we can celebrate the season’s actual arrival.

How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.

~ Ryokan (1758-1831), Japanese poet, hermit, and Buddhist monk

Morning

(No.2 by Mark Rothko, 1903-1970, American painter)

The day breaks quietly.

Morning — cutting firewood, filling my jug
with pure water, gathering wild grasses,
while a cool Autumn rain gently falls.

~ Ryokan (1758-1831), Japanese poet, hermit, and Buddhist monk