door

May 19, 2023

JUST LIKE THAT

“And just like that,” he said. “Just like that,” she replied. “Are you certain, I wouldn’t want to go off half cocked?” he asked. “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t almost certain, would I,” was her retort. “But almost certain isn’t absolutely certain,” he noted. “As you well know, nothing is absolutely certain until it happens. And it hasn’t happened or we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?” She walked toward the door and he said loudly, “so you’re walking away from this conversation. Just like that?” Looking back she said, “just like that.”

March 19, 2023

KYOZAN POINTS TO SNOW

When you come
searching for a key
to unlock the door
to Nirvana
I will ask you
to complete
a simple task.
All you need to do
is go to the ocean
and select the one
drop of water different
from all of the others.

A reflection on Case 26 of the Book of Equanimity, 従容錄, Shōyōroku

March 5, 2023

LEFT HANGING

Why is it that so many songwriters
have an intense need, a desire really,
to leave the listener wondering
in frustration at how the story ends.

I can forgive Leonard Cohen for his
Hallelujah for no one is quite certain
how many verses he wrote, although
more than 80 seems to be the number,
so perhaps a missing one or ten
concludes the various stories
the song has told through time.

And Harry Chapin did give us
an ending of sorts to Taxi,
in his song Sequel, but even there
he left the door ajar, but he died
too young, so any subsequent sequels
went to the grave with him.

And one offender I cannot yet forgive
is the Ode to Billy Joe, since really,
he’s gone but that wasn’t enough
for brother, and you’d think
he would have a name since
he married Becky Thompson,
and what kind of store did they buy,
why in Tupelo, was she from there, and
what, if anything, do we know about her?

January 20, 2023

MY RABBI (PART 1)

If you ask why I am a Buddhist
I will tell you there are a myriad
of possible reasons, choose one,
or take this one, it fits nicely.

I am in college, pulling my grades
up to mediocre, thoughts of medicine
gone, law only faint on a distant horizon
a master’s degree away.

I visit my childhood rabbi, a man
who has been my guide through much.
I peer into his office, his door removed,
and he bids me to come in and sit.

I do, slowly, carefully negotiating
around stacks of books piled
on every possible flat surface,
the walls covered in bookcases

straining to hold their loads, I
knowing a too loud sound, a jostle
and the avalanche would be
impossible to stop, disastrous.

October 3, 2022

UMMON’S MOUNT SUMERU

When you ask your teacher
what happens when you
stop thinking, allow
no new thoughts
what you expect him
to tell you?

The dead have no thoughts
but that is not the door
to Nirvana.

But if thoughts abandon you
without your effort, without
being asked to do so,
then the door you seek
will open before you.

A reflection on case 19 of the Book of Equanimity 従容錄, Shōyōroku

September 19, 2022

UMMON’S MOUNT SUMERU

When you ask your teacher
what happens when you
stop thinking, allow
no new thoughts
what you expect him
to tell you?

The dead have no thoughts
but that is not the door
to Nirvana.

But if thoughts abandon you
without your effort, without
being asked to do so,
then the door you seek
will open before you.

A reflection on Case 19 of the Book of Equanimity (従容錄, Shōyōroku)

August 11, 2022

CURFEW

We sat in the cramped kitchen
huddled around the stove
the open oven door spreading
a faint warmth that barely
slid through the winter chill.
The bare bulb in the ceiling
strained and flickered
fighting to hold as the generators
were shut down, and darkness
enveloped our small world.
The sky was lit by the flares
and the odor of exploding shells
seeped through the towel
sealed windows covered
in the tattered bedsheets
too thin to afford warmth.
Ibrahim had been gone two weeks
sneaking out of the city
to join his brothers in Gorazde
or Tuzla, or wherever it was
that they were struggling
to save what little was left.
We huddled under the small table
and dreamed of the taste
of fresh bread, or even pork.
In the morning he would run
among the craters in the streets
in search of the convoy
and the handouts, which we
would raven as the sun set
over our war torn hell.

First published in Legal Studies Forum, Vol. XXX, No. 1 & 2, 2006

October 7, 2021

SONNET TO A PORTUGUESE

You came into my life last week, your name
forever locked away inside her mind.
My life, she felt, would never be the same
and therefore left all thought of you behind.
You loved her, I suppose, that summer night
then left her, bearing me, until she turned
me over for adoption, that she might
forget the love that you so quickly spurned.
A Jew, she said, but would say little more
a father, Portuguese, is all I know,
who cast his seed, then left and closed the door
and me, the son, he never would see grow.
You left her life long before I was born,
the father I won’t know but only mourn.

First published in Minison Project, Sonnet Collection Series, Vol. 2, Sept. 2021

August 17, 2021

RECALL

As you sit in your suburban homes,
by the pools at your country clubs,
in your vacation resort villas, try
for the sake of the patriarchs
and matriarchs of our faith, to remember
that we were the poor, we were
the huddled masses, we yearned
to breathe free, we the tempest tossed.

Remember the tenements
of the Lower East Side,
the sweat shops, the struggle,
remember all of this, remember
where we came from, from the sthetl,
from the pogrom, from poverty,
recall we were the wretched refuse
for whom a door was opened.

Remember all of this now, as you
so willingly wish to slam the door
to those whose only wish is
to follow in our now dusty footsteps.

November 10, 2020

TOO LATE

Do those, who
imagine themselves leaders,
or smarter and better
than the rest of us, and
who deny science, (no,
the amassing of money
is not a law of physics)
plan to take up swimming?

Or will they wait
until the bears are
at their door, their
white coats grayed
by the last
belches of soggy
coal, and then bemoan
the fact that
their yachts have
floated off on
the rising seas
that now lap
at their once
beach view feet.

It’s no matter
to most of
the people of
the world who
starved to death
or died of disease
years ago.