The Poetry of Meetings

Hey Flame, the Jindabyne Road Warriors have let me stay here a while. If you have any stories to share then cough them up, or if someone has some stories to tell, pass them on, so that I can tell the packs here. I have a few stories, songs and poems, some old ones, and some new.

So where do I start? Well a week ago I answered the call to Sydney by the Coffin Chasers. I was already planning to head there to back up Guts-Lie-On-Ground, Alpha of the Road Warriors. And, I thought I would check out what was going on with them.

The rest of the Mercury Wolves had already headed down there but I was going to turn up late, I had to fix some damage to the Beast, and I thought I would do her up a bit while I was at it.

Anyway, I finally get to Sydney, to the cemetery to meet people, and there are not that many around.

I try to speak to the guy, who claims he is an Alpha from Brisbane, but he has some tickets on himself, so I finally find Burrows-Through-Flesh from the Road Warriors and he tells me that everyone is in a ritual with some Pure. Now that is dodge you know - deals with the Pure seem really popular at the moment - but, everyone should know that deals with the Pure don’t end well. They are, after-all, wanting to wipe out the Foresaken completely.

So, Burrows and I talk a bit about this ritual when I spot a bunch of Japanese sitting in the cemetery. I figure they are Japanese because I have seen plenty of samurai and ninja movies and these people look like they have walked straight out of one of them, which is odd; this is a cemetery in Sydney, not a cemetery in Japan. A cemetery in Japan is where you maybe expect to find a bunch of Japanese samurai looking types.

So, I lead Burrows over there and we sit down for a chat. But, Flame, this is where it gets sticky, these people were not that easy to talk to. They have a translator, I think the daughter of one of them, so we chat through this translator, and I do not think she is translating everything. They say a lot and laugh a fair bit, and we get a bit of it I think, although I think that maybe she left out some of the funnier bits. Anyway, I have been trying to think of a good way to tell you what they said, and what we talked about. So, I spent the last few days thinking about them and I jumped on the net here at the vineyard and searched around. Eventually I found a site about Japanese poetry. Now there are a couple of different types but I liked the short stuff. They are about first impressions, and it is supposed to be simple but complex, all Zen or some such thing, so I wrote some for you, about what we spoke about.

Dry twig touched

the abandoned people;

burnt forever

Lotus:

Between them

Of them

Questions?

The river stone path flows

to mountain calm

Hear no story,

But born between us

a thoughtful word

I am not Japanese, but this stuff makes me feel all mellow and calm. So there you go Flame; Japanese Samurai in a cemetery in Sydney talking about choices and not talking to the Pure. I will tell you something else tomorrow.