A Memorial Tribute to Bruce Ross

Ryushaku-ji

Perhaps more than any other spot I was to visit in retracing Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Far North. Ryushaku-ji, the place Bashō wrote his famous cicada haiku, drew me. A few days before I left for Japan I hiked up a local mountain in Northeast Maine. It was a steep vertical climb, and nearing the open top that was covered in pink granite, I came to an insight into Bashō’s haiku as I looked at the scattered rock just below the summit:

Chick Hill summit
  a cricket reverberates
  among the rocks

The sound of that lone cricket intensified the stillness of that mountaintop in a way similar to the sound of Bashō’s cicada. About halfway up the climb to Ryushaku-ji, there was a monument dedicated to Bashō’s cicada haiku. According to our guide, this was the spot where Bashō heard the cicada, although there was some conjecture as to which variety of cicada he had heard. I noticed that a Buddha bas-relief next to the monument had all but worn into the rock it was carved into. At the summit I experienced the stillness Bashō had come here to find. I even heard a lonely cricket’s voice. It was dusk.

        Ryushaku-ji
through dense rising mist
  the crow’s call 

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