They can have sharp edges
that wound on contact, some cuts
so deep they leave lasting scars.
They can get stuck in the throat
until you feel you can no longer
breathe, no longer cry out for help.
They can lie there, an
aggregate always acreting
and yet rejecting any meaning.
Or they can, carefully chosen
present great beauty, offer
hope, promise freedom.
They are the currency of poets
and writers, and they chronicle
our history and our lives.
I should pause for a moment
and mourn the plump orbs
vinaceous in the morning sun,
torn free, placed in baskets
and carried off to be crushed.
But the cabernet beckons,
its first sip telling the tale
of the California summer,
the oak having long forgotten
the tree from which it was cut,
and I watch as the sun
reluctantly retreats,
a flaming farewell, the promise
of a return, the moon casting
its purple glare on the wine glass.
First appeared in Flora Fiction, Vol. 3, Issue 4, Winter 2022
https://florafiction.com/literary-magazine/volume-4/
Preparing it to undergo
the knife, its core excised,
stem cast aside, sliced
then cut into pieces
I pause to consider that
this pear was once
a blossom, a delicate
white flower, its cranberry
red anthes soon to turn
black, picked carefully,
cradled into a bushel,
by a knowing hand,
washed, and gently
packed for shipment.
For me it was just
plucking it from the bin
at the market, holding
it in the harsh lighting
looking for blemishes,
and then placing it
in the cart, then the bag
hoping it would not
bruise before undergoing
its final surgery.
Snakes, like coins,
have both head and tail.
If I cut a snake in two,
have I two snakes,
or none at all?
Walk carefully
for the spade
that cuts the snake
can dig an inescapable abyss.
A reflection on case 43 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)
At the moment of your birth
my son, I grew suddenly older,
mortality became a reality
that I could no longer avoid.
You could not imagine this,
and I doubt others could see
but I knew and the infinite
collapsed inside the event horizon.
Your brother came later, but
that death was incremental,
a single cut among thousands,
a step on a path you chose for me.
You have your own children now,
your shochet impatiently
waiting in the shadows, and
they cannot imagine their
roles until the play rolls out
and they are thrust onto the stage
with no possible exits, and an audience
that knows how this play ends.
You sit before him
an axe in his hand.
He asks a question and says
if you answer I will cut off
your right hand,
if you do not respond
I will sever your left.
There is no sound
from the clock in the corner
as you silently grab his axe
and he smiles
in deeply shared knowledge.
A reflection on Case 82 of the Iron Flute Koans
If I ask you
“does a circle
have both inside
and outside,” what do you say.
If you cut it into
three pieces, which
has inside, which outside
and what of the third?
A reflection on Case 55 of the True Dharma Eye (Shobogenzo) Koans
My wife pauses by the placard
in the nature preserve and tells me
that what I have been calling grasses
are in fact a sedge known as sawgrass.
She points out the warning that
it’s serrated on the edge and earned
its name from those who grasped
it without knowing or thinking first.
I feign listening but she knows
my mind is elsewhere, knows I often
depart conversations suddenly
while maintaining a false presence.
She does not know I am 40 years
younger, pouring hydrogen peroxide
on the cut deep into the interossei
muscles when the glove slipped off
and the yucca I was boldly trying
to pull from the dry, stone like soil
had decided this was the moment
to extract its final revenge.
Morning slowly encroaches
on your dreams, eroding
images despite your tightening grasp.
Clear lines blur, become hazy
and dissipate bleached
by the first light creeping
around the shades.
The dreams do not care
for they will arise again
when they choose
and this is for them
a mere inconvenience.
You are the loser here
for the linear mindstring
once cut never reties
with simplicity and something
is always lost in the tying.
an old writer and his words 