He appears, rising from the horizon
the sun at his back, as if a mirage
taking physical shape and form.
He approaches slowly, your eyes
straining to separate him
from the sun’s growing glow.
You wonder if his is a holy man
robed and with a staff, walking
to announce his long awaited return.
As he grows closer, you realize
he is a she , older, in a flowing
dress with a walking stick, not
the returner for who you wish,
but your faith requires that you
continue waiting in hope.
Describe this moment
without use of word or sound –
see where you are
with eyes pressed tightly closed,
hear a song with utter silence,
taste the pure mountain air
reach out and touch
that which has no shape
or form, no essence
and you sit
in the middle
of reality.
A reflection on case 45 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)
In the beginning there was
a void, stasis, dimensionless.
I am a point, without size
taking form only in motion,
so too the seat on which
I sit on United flight 951
not going from point A
to point B for neither
can exist in motion
transcending time.
Each decision sets
one me on a path, into
a dimension, dimensions
while I tread a different path
and I a third, yet I have seen
the step ahead before
having been on its path
as all random walks
must cross endlessly.
The universe grows crowded
with exponential me’s
creating paths, and so
must expand, until we cross
and in some minuscule
amount contract the cosmos.
Often I seek pain to slow
the pace, or pleasure
to quicken it, always immutable.
I have learned all of this
in my endless search
for my paradoxical twin
who prefers the accelerated
pace, moving as quickly
as possible, who looks
younger at each intersection.
Good night Albert.
First Appeared in Afterthoughts (Canada), Vol. 2, No. 4, Autumn 1995.
How much better off would we be
if every poet and wanna be were
compelled to write using only paper
and a quill pen dipped regularly
into a small glass inkwell?
You must wonder if we would see
more elegance, villanelles, sonnets,
and the other forms now lying jumbled
in the great literary waste bin.
What would we discover if left
to our own hand, words born
or twisted by coincidence or error,
no autocorrect function save
the endless manual revisions?
Perhaps this is the failure of much
of today’s poetry, but neither of us
is likely to find out, for this, like
so many others, was cast to pixels
on a device far smarter than I.
Tomorrow this poem will
most assuredly no lnger be here,
though when during the night
it will slip away, never again
to be seen, I don’t know or perhaps it
will return in a form I would not recognize,
re-crafted by the hand of an unseen editor.
It may take on a meaning unfamiliar,
or translate itself into a tongue
that I can neither speak nor read,
or perhaps, most dreadedly, assume
the shape of prose, accreting words
until the embedded thought is bloated
and wholly unrecognizable.
Even if I tried to stop it, watched
carefully, it would no doubt
remind me that poems have a life
of their own once cast to paper
or pixels, and I am at best only
another editor or reader, and it
takes kindly on most days to neither.
Here in Haikutown
verisimilitude can
be found in line two.
But over in Tankaville
it can have three addresses.
The pelican dives
beneath an ominous sky –
this is no Koi pond.
Snowy egret stares,
his reflection returns it
calm pond undisturbed.
Haiku is perfect
if you adhere to the form
in all four seasons.
Sitting beneath the Bodhi tree
I wrestle with passing thoughts
in an unending struggle with me.
The true face of the pain I see
results from what I have wrought
sitting beneath the Bodhi tree.
I grow tired, wish to flee–
above all, to avoid being caught
in an unending struggle with me
for a single moment. I can be
something greater than I thought
sitting beneath the Bodhi tree.
That will be my apogee
until overcome by the battle fought
in an unending struggle with me.
For that brief moment I and we
will be one, as the Buddha taught
sitting beneath the Bodhi tree
in an unending struggle with me.
The ocean wind swept through the city
a sudden rain washed sidewalk, shop and street,
carried both dreams and sins back to the sea.
For the young child, time slid by easily,
life a campaign that allowed no retreat.
The ocean wind swept through the city,
rattled church windows, so that all could see
the priest stripped of dogma. Christ on pierced feet
carried both dreams and sins back to the sea,
cast them to the waves, as if once set free
both dreamer, sinner would avoid hell’s heat.
The ocean wind sweeps through the city,
whispers to the rich man, “what will you be
at the end of this life, when bitter sleep
carries both dreams and sins back to the sea.
When you are buried deeply in the peat
will we see your face in the turf fire’s heat?”
The ocean wind sweeps through the city,
carries both dreams and sins back to the sea.
sitting, time biding
leaf floats down from branch
trampled under foot
road salt crusts over
etched into a chrome bumper
the heron returns
pine needles a bed
for the deer and the hunter
tall pines cry leaden tears
tangled broken branch
dangling from a barren oak
awaiting spring rain
giant cranes are perched
on thin spindly legs, necks bowed
steel beams scratch the clouds
an old writer and his words 