"Lost in words" [loose shi sequence]

(i)

Reclusion could be closing or an opening
is silence melding question with reply?

cicadas chant   late summer's sonic ripening
what troubles me   what way to say   have I?

I've got to haul myself back into action
I need to work and live before I die

it's commonplace to claim no satisfaction
but I enjoy stray smiles drifting by


(ii)

Alas   I'm such a brew of contradiction
life buffets those who live it   hapless clouds

cicadas have a knack for choosing diction
they make the very sound their form allows

so apt it proves   it suits the lating season
I've yet to grasp   how time's a string of nows

perhaps there is no place that's not a prison
does breaking free necessitate keen vows?


(iii)

In poetry I find peculiar solace
I rest within its shade   and sip its water

sometimes it lends a hut   sometimes a palace
sometimes it lets you wed its eldest daughter

it's known for delicate flowers   rife in rivers
it swirls the wayward leaf   down in the gutter

it stows a school of minnows   tight in its quiver
it churns the trove of milk   right into butter


(iv)

Who hope to find a meaning   lost in words
are panning like the fools   who sift the sand

who listen for a hint   from warbling birds
are pitiful   perhaps in ways unplanned

we wander through the grove   of nouns & verbs
and wonder from what bough   our hearts depend?

we gather random stones or fragrant herbs
as if we had a million moons to spend


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vaguely informed by old dabblings in classical Chinese poetry, though not in so formally rigorous (or rigorously formal) a way