Look out of the window
the garden is barren
of oaks, nor is this
a Temple in China.
If you listen carefully
a thousand branches
bend quietly in the wind,
a simple wave washing
oak leaves onto
expectant soil.
A reflection on case 37 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate)
I saw a deceased palmetto bug
this morning in the rest room
of our favorite coffee shop .
It is the first we’ve seen
in four winters here in Florida,
and we didn’t mourn its passing.
Forty-six years ago, during
a previous Florida life, my cat
would find numerous palmettos,
which she found made great toys
to dribble across the terazzo floors
of the small apartment, and
once deceased, tuck into a corner
for later play, or when upset with me,
to deposit in some location where
I couldn’t hope to notice until
it was too late, the grin
on her face positively Cheshire.
She also caught mice, despite being
declawed, but she had the courtesy
to deposit their bodies by front door.
Two headstones
Name, rank, branch
of service, dates.
One New Jersey, one
Virginia, both Bittle
neither certain.
An email from
another Bittle, never
knew my father
but his was
William, and in
that moment,
James Owen became
a father yet again
and I complete.
And later still
a single picture
he in the back
row and the mirror
agrees that we
are truly family.
Today I again took up the brush,
carefully mixed the sumi-e ink
and with hand poised over a sheet
of anticipating rice paper waited,
knowing that the moment for a stroke
was imminent but not yet at hand,
and I dare not force it for brush
painting is a practice that cannot
be compelled, a gentle merger
of idea, brush, ink and paper,
and if any are missing, a sadness
that can only be irreversible.
Today the brush considered the ink
and decided it was not a good day
and so I cleaned it carefully, set it
aside with the block of ink,
and rolling the rice paper, promised
it, myself, that we would repeat
this exercise until the moment was
right and the image was ready to appear.
My uncle writes his journal
in cramped Yiddish, English
will not do, it lacks the words
he says, to describe his world.
He describes the flavor
of the capon left to stew
on the stove, the sweet taste
of carrots and prunes.
He carefully notes the thumb
of the butcher sliding onto
the back of the scale, applying
just a dollar of pressure.
He writes pages of her
monologue, the slow twisting
of words stuck under his skin
like so many shoots of bamboo.
The language is sweet, he says
and when it is lacking, he
can reach into its roots
and graft a new word.
His journal sits on its shelf
gathering dust, its words
lost on my tongue, a tome
consigned to history.
First Appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, Fall 1996.
The kid is late again today, but that
is sadly not unusual, the old man said.
I ought to get rid of him, but I know
he needs the job to feed his family.
In the meanwhile, I’ll now have
to hobble down to the meadow
and hope my collie, who’s as old as I,
is up to the job of herding sheep still.
And I know that he will only shrug
when I threaten to dock his pay
for the loss, hell, even just the profit
I lost on the corn the cows consumed.
I get that he’s tired, those late night
gigs at club in town, and I hear that
he’s thinking of joining a trio in Chicago,
though I have no idea how they ever
heard his playing out here in fly-over-ville,
but I guess I’d better let him get his rest,
for if he becomes a star, maybe he’ll
remember me in his first CD’s liner notes.
He awoke this morning to discover his mortality.
This was a concept he had never before
considered, it had never crossed his mind.
He had never been to a funeral, came from
a small family, an only child, his parents
and grandparents still living, not that he
ever saw them, he valued his solitude.
But this morning, while everything was the same,
something was radically different.
He had always recognized the passage of time,
but it was a finite measure backward only,
forward, time was an endless expanse
of possibility and uncertainty, nothing more.
Yet this morning he knew nothing had changed,
but he was mortal, that his time remaining
was not only finite, that was sad enough,
but it was ever so slowly shrinking.
He knew he had to get on with his life, so
he set about his day as though it were any other,
but he couldn’t get the thought of mortality
out of his mind, it was like a smothering shadow
that accompanied his every moment, he focused
on it obsessively even as he stepped off the curb.
Inward but not outward
a broken stick
Outward but no inward
a broken stick
A partridge sings
in silence
flowers bloom
at midnight
Fuketsu smiles knowingly.
A reflection on case 24 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate)
The sun is shining brightly today,
and the sky, with only the odd
passing cloud, is that certain blue.
Do not ask me to describe that certain
blue, but be assured it is not exactly
the blue that you are imagining right now.
Even if I would describe it, in some
infinite detail, your vision of it
would at best be a near approximation.
The gull that swooped in and stole
the crust of bread I overtoasted
this morning knew exactly what the blue was.
Birds generally, and gulls in particular
have deep understanding of blue
that you, my friends, cannot even imagine.
Getting a headache, are we? You feel like Schrodinger’s cat. It’s really like asking yourself if the Big Bang was the beginning of everything, what was there in that split second before the Big Bang? If God created everything, what created God? If time begins with the Big Bang, what time was it before there was time? And who are you really, if you know your are merely an illusion created by you? And please tell me, what time is it? Find the black hole, for there is freedom.
an old writer and his words 