John Zheng
Not in Vain
After the Hemingway Museum, my wife and I amble to Garbo’s Grill to savor mango dogs. We stand chewing in the summer sun as a few roosters strut around like fashion models. Patting my stuffed belly, I suggest window-shopping along Duval. At an art gallery, a photograph of a snowy egret catches our eye. It’s titled “Calling.” “Is it courting?” my wife whispers, as if the bird may startle and flap away. At the entrance of an antique shop, I bump into a life-size cardboard cutout of Robert Johnson, a smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. The bluesman stands there like a doorman, ready to welcome us in. One of Johnson’s songs comes to mind, and changing the words I begin to sing in a muffled tone: “I walk with you to the hotel hand in hand.” My wife waves as if to drive off a buzzing fly, but I sing on as we keep strolling. “It’s not hard at all to tell love is surely in gain…”
bodhi walk step by step into nothing
Note: Click here to listen to Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain.” Lyrics can be found on the website of the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation, here: https://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/track/love-in-vain/
About the Author
John Zheng has authored Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and published haibun and tanka prose in cho, Haibun Today, Southern Quarterly, and Spillway. His latest book is A Way of Looking, a collection of haibun and tanka prose.