Reading Bashō

Shivpreet Singh

This morning I was reading Bashō again,
his clean, sorrow-soaked lines
slipping under my skin
like cool sheets in August.

He spoke of nodes of sorrow,
and I was no longer in my living room
but in a bamboo grove: nodes, internodes;
not walking but growing,
rising, slow, through rings of silence and hurt.

I thought of how I came to the bansuri:
not joy, not discipline, but thirst
made me breathe into a hollow reed,
as if I whispered my longing
into a borrowed throat.

I did not learn singing as others did,
no rigorous scales at dawn,
only this reaching toward sound,
trying to echo the flute
as it bends a note on the lip’s small tensions,
shaping air to a tear.

I wanted to be that bamboo,
xylem under tension, a column
pulling water skyward,
to shape my voice around its emptiness,
phrases bending not for perfection
but for the ache that tunes them.

I still sing like that, as if returning
to a first wound, to the ancient guru,
where negative pressure gathers and says:
Now. Speak.

The Science

This poem links grief and artistic practice to two literal forms of tension—plant hydraulics and sound. In bamboos, the culm is segmented into nodes and internodes. Water ascends through xylem via the cohesion–tension mechanism: evaporation at leaf surfaces (transpiration) creates negative pressure that pulls a continuous water column upward. This tensile force is stabilised by hydrogen bonding among water molecules and the narrow conduits; if tension exceeds structural limits, cavitation (air embolism) can break the column. The poem’s ‘thirst’ and upward pull echo this hydraulic tension.

The bansuri/flute images extend tension into acoustics. A steady air jet at the embouchure generates edge tones and pressure oscillations that form standing waves within the tube, with nodes and antinodes. Small changes in lip tension, jet angle, and effective tube length create pitch bends and harmonic tension–release patterns. The speaker ‘bending a note into a tear’ mirrors how controlled physical tension—negative pressure in xylem, organised pressure in air columns—produces sustained, meaningful flow. In short, the poem’s emotional poise is carried by real, named tensions: water held against gravity and sound held in resonance.

The Poet

Shivpreet Singh is an American Sikh poet, musician, and translator based in San Ramon, California. Born in Nepal and raised in Delhi and San Jose, he bridges multiple cultures, languages, and sound‑meditation traditions. His presidential award‑winning music reaches over five million listeners yearly on Spotify and YouTube Music, and his translations and essays on contemporary poetry reach over one million readers at shivpreet.com. A former scientist and Wall Street analyst, he now writes poetry full‑time while volunteering with the DhunAnand Foundation, a non‑profit organisation supporting global artists.  More at shivpreetsingh.com.

Next poem: Surface Tension of Dew by Megan Day