Flowing Rivers, Shattered Chains

Like water, we seek the lowest places
Where the humble and forgotten dwell
Not in palaces of gold and steel
But in valleys where wild plums fall for all.

The Dao flows through broken factory gates
Past the ruins of hierarchy
Where workers once bowed to masters
Now mushrooms bow only to wind.

Who can own the morning mist?
Who can hoard the mountain spring?
All wealth flows like streams to streams
Finding its own level in sharing.

No force required —
Watch how leaves decompose
Freely giving all they are
To feed the forest floor.
This is true wealth: the passing on,
The letting go, the flowing down.

The sage rulers have fallen
Like autumn leaves from withered trees
And in their absence, we remember
How to move like water:
Soft yet powerful,
Yielding yet unstoppable,
Finding paths of least resistance
Through the cracks in every wall.

Ten thousand things in harmony
Need no five-year plans
Need no markets, need no state
Just as clouds need no commands to rain
And forests need no laws to grow.

Each according to their nature
Each according to their need
Like the way moss shares its moisture
Or how mycelium feeds the trees.

The great way is very simple:
Empty your borders
Lower your walls
Share your rice
Break your chains
And flow, flow, flow
Like rivers to the stateless sea
Where all streams become one
Yet none lose their way.

In true community
As in true nature
The whole is found in yielding
Power in releasing
Freedom in the space between
Where nothing is controlled
And nothing is denied.

Listen to the wisdom
Of bamboo bending in the storm —
True strength lies not in rigid ranks
But in the supple dance of leaves,
The anarchist heart of existence
Beating in every wild pulse of life.