Memory

May 21, 2023

CALLING

As I age, I more willingly accede
to the sirens call of sleep
for as night washes over me
pulling up its blanket of stars
she takes me on a voyage
to destinations she will
not disclose until our arrival.
The journey may be pleasant
or the seas of night can be
roiling, but her grip is firm.
But in her never certain world
age can slough off, fall away
until my body and its increasing
frailties and limitations slip away
and my youth is no longer
a memory, but on this night
or that, it is my new if transient reality.
But I dare not cling to it, for
the sun will intercede again
and drag me back to the body
I so willingly escape each night.

May 15, 2023

MASTER MA IS UNWELL

Yesterday is but a shadow
and tomorrow an illusion.
Do not wallow in the mud
of attempted memory, do
not sink in the mire
of deluded anticipation.
Stop, listen to the sun
and the moon sing
of the Dharma, hear
the silence it brings
for you are alive
in this moment,
and there is
no other moment
in which you can live.

A reflection on Case 3 of the Blue Cliff Record (Hekiganroku 碧巌録)

April 29, 2023

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT

The fortune cookies of my childhood
were far more interesting, or so
my memory would have it.
The cookies offered wisdom
of the East, or so it seemed
to a 10-year-old, but perhaps
it was the same mumbo-jumbo
in the bulk print today, now
that the cookies, which once
tasted good, unlike today’s
origami cardboard, were
folded by hand, and there
were no lotteries then, so
there was no need for lucky numbers
nor did they make a foolish
attempt to teach me words
in Chinese that I will
never have a reason to use.

February 10, 2023

FINAL TEST

If he were graded solely
on effort, he would have
received a B+ but life doesn’t
allow such a narrow view.

He had no father, no model
so he stumbled through looking
at others, unsure which were right
which were botching the job.

He bought an ancient first
baseman’s glove from Goodwill
the only left-handed glove they had
and I taught him to use it.

When we went camping
with the Boy Scouts, he the new
Scoutmaster, we made sure
to build the fire and set up his tent.

He’s been gone almost
four years and I remember all
of the things he tried and
for those I still mourn him.

November 2, 2022

STOIC

He will do it again tomorrow as he did yesterday and each day before that for as long as he can remember. He would like not to have to do it, but he knows he must, just as he knows the outcome will be almost the same, just the slightest of changes imperceptible from day to day. He doesn’t like the changes, and wishes he could reverse them. But although he has asked, the morning mirror says he cannot. And the mirror is not smiling.

August 4, 2022

ON ARRIVING

They arrive after a long flight
from tyranny, from oppression
from the nightmare of endless
fear, from hunger, from faith
denied, from the bottomless
depths of poverty, scarred
memories etched in their souls,
hoping for an ending as much
as wishing for a new beginning.
They have been here, a new
generation, raised on the stories,
versed in the painful history,
still residual anger born
of love for those who fled,
without the pain of experience,
who can forget when it is
others who now wish only
to arrive to the freedom they
have known since childhood

First appeared in Circumference, Issue 5, June 2022
https://poetryatpi.wordpress.com/

July 8, 2022

OF THE CHILD

How many times have we
heard someone intone
the never ending expression:
“in the best interests of the child.”

Never, I imagine, has anyone
asked the child what he or she
thought was in their best interest,
for children, we assume, cannot
know what is in their interest.

A child would gladly tell you
but an adult would often disagree,
anchored to the memory
of their parents always deciding
what was in their best interest
whether or not they agreed,
and assuming that is how
things always ought to be.

July 7, 2022

SPRING

She says her favorite month
is May, when spring’s grip
is tightest, but most of all
she cherishes the rain.
She is intimate with the rain,
there is a privacy that only
she can concede, if she wants.
She can take a drop of rain
and it is hers alone, she need
only share it with the sky,
it is always clean on her tongue.
She may borrow rain
from the trees, catch it
as it slides from leaves,
or watch it slowly tumble
from the eaves of the house
she remembers from childhood.
She loves walking barefoot
through fresh fallen puddles
as it washes bitter memories
into the willing earth.

First published in Creatopia, Issue 5, Spring 2022
https://creatopia.studio/creatopia-collection-magazine/spring-2022-renewal-magazine/

July 3, 2022

LUNA’S SONG

Tonight, when the sun
has finally conceded the day
to its distant but ever larger kin,
the moon will again sing
her ever waning song
hoping we will join
in a chorus we have
so long forgotten,
bound to the earth
in body and in waxing thought.

We will stop and listen
perhaps, over the din
of the city, the traffic,
the animals conversing
with the sky, our thoughts,
but the words will now
be an alien language
for which we have
no dictionary, only
the faint memory
of the place from which
both we and the moon
share cosmic ancestry.