Chinese Poetry

My mother gave this to me about ten years ago and told me to hang it up on a wall. She didn't know what the words meant, but she said, "It's done by someone famous... it's worth some money." I didn't hang it, as I needed to know what it meant before I did anything with it.

I recently met a man named George, who is Taiwanese and studies Chinese calligraphy. I took this picture and brought it to him to see if he could tell me the meaning of the words.

Apparently, it is poetry that was most likely written by a monk. He couldn't translate it exactly, but he said, "It is about the motion of the ocean waves exposing the rocks and the corals underneath."
I love that! I can now hang it with pride. :)

I have written my own version of the poem in English with the same idea in mind:

The waves of the sea
The rough and the calm
The beauty of change
Never standing still

Beneath the movement
Rocks and corals lie
Steady and quiet
Exposed by the dance