February 3, 2023

SEASONS

Here we measure seasons
by small changes in temperature
and for one, heavy rainfall.

We are the calendar reliant,
otherwise left to look at the moon
and count to ascertain roughly

what month it might be, but
we now live in a solar calendar
world so our lunar efforts
are necessarily doomed to failure.

And holidays are different here,
Christmas has no snow,
so we decorate our palms
and perhaps have inflatable
snowmen or reindeer, and hang
icicles from our gutters as
a reminder of what winter
is for so many other than us.

October 10, 2022

HOFUKO’S POINT OF ATTAINMENT

You may ask many things
of any teacher you meet
but the wisest of them
will only offer you
unending questions.
When you look to them
to point you to the Way
they are doomed to failure
for your feet obscure
the Way, and it is only
by looking within
and down through your legs
and feet and toes
that you can see the way

A reflection on Case 63 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)

September 10, 2022

Now, here, the winter stars
are usually fearless,
some drowned by the moon,
but she waxes and wanes
and they reappear, the brightest
never fearing the chilled sky.
We stare at them in wonder
having forgotten for so many
years just how beautiful
they can be in their glory.

April 2, 2022

HAUNTING

The ghosts of my birth parents
blow into my dreams as
so many white sheets torn
from the clothesline
by gale winds, fly over me,
at once angels and vultures
carrying off memories
created from the clay
of surmise and wishful thinking.

I invite their visits, frail
branches to which to cling
in the storms of growing age,
beginnings tenuous anchors
to hold against time, knowing
the battle cannot be won,
but take joy in skirmishes
not to be diminished
by an ultimate failure I
have long come to accept.

February 19, 2022

EASY, I SAID

I had great plans
for the day, a simple project,
easy install said the instructions
and an hour in, nothing working.

Of course it was a weekend
so I called for help and
the professional worked
another two hours before
announcing nothing doing.

We concluded the product
was dead on arrival, as were
the plans I had made
for the bulk of thd day,

but there was the cost
of the service call, of course
at weekend surcharge rates,
to make the failure more painful.

December 26, 2021

SLICED CLICHE

He is fond of saying that he
is the best thing since sliced bread.

There is so much wrong
with that statement, even
ignoring that he is the one
who keeps repeating it.

If he were that great,
and no one is rushing to suggest
that he has even approached it,
wouldn’t he want to be just
as great as sliced bread?

And what sort of bread, that
matters more than he realizes.

It’s one thing to be a good
pumpernickel, or even a great
Jewish rye, hell most would
settle for a multigrain, but
knowing him, he probably
means Wonder Bread, and that
is a low mark of which
to fall painfully short.

July 30, 2021

I have a catalog of friends, who
I told I would never give up, distance
notwithstanding, we all do, and mine
is replete with both good and bad
intentions, each and every one a failure.

I did not say this to my ex-wife
when we divorced, and I must say
that while I failed at the marriage,
or so she said, I did not ever fail
at not being friends after its end.

July 4, 2021

THE CHARM

The first one felt right,
there was nothing deeper considered,
just that feeling that now,
I know, anyone might have provided
but then, it was something
in a world of nothing.

The second, really, was
certainly right, for life this time,
the wisdom of a single failure
enough to ensure success,
and when it came apart
thirty years later, it was
apparent it was never right,
just more than nothing.

This one is right, for it
does not require feeling so,
merely being in her presence,
a completeness I never knew,
which explains why this time
nothing can get in the way
of the ultimate everything.

January 1, 2021

THIS YEAR I

It is a day set aside for resolutions
although there is no reason
you cannot make a resolution
any day of your choosing.

Perhaps it is a day for those
resolutions you might not
otherwise make, the bold
or daunting, more likely a day
for the resolutions you know
you will abandon as too hard
or simply utterly impractical.

This year I have resolved not
to engage in the annual ritual,
the annual farce more accurately,
and will achieve a long-held goal
of conceding failure early,
in a new year that will afford
myriad chances to come up short.

And there is a hidden blessing
in my newfound resolve
to swear off resolutions, so
take that old Epimenides.