place

May 23, 2023

THE BLEEDING EDGE

We are lovers of novelty, we want
all that is new or clinging
to what we imagine are our roots.
It has long been this way,
you need only look at the map.
Hampshire, York, Jersey, and
for that matter Brunswick and Mexico.
We crave innovation, we always
want to be on the cutting edge, forgetting
that all too soon it will become
the bleeding edge, and we will curse
its failures, its shortcomings.
So ask yourself if those who live
in Hampshire, York, Jersey, and
Brunswick, Scotia, and Mexico
think they live in a place that is
no longer new, left behind in
an endless search for something
other than what we have right now.

May 20, 2023

COMMON UNDERSTANDING

It didn’t surprise him that he
quickly understood the cat
they adopted during the pandemic
for all he had to do was apply
basic feline logic, that everything
in her new home was either
hers or theirs collectively,
it was just that simple.
He had come from a place,
a life, where there had been
hers and theirs, simple.
When that life ended, as everyone
but him seemed to know it would,
he came away with that portion
of theirs for which his ex cared least
or of which she had grown tired.
So he and the cat had a comfortable
understanding until more and more
of theirs became hers alone.

March 25, 2023

CONCEIVE OF THIS

No child, no youth
wants to imagine the moment
of his or her conception.
Now, that is the moment of personhood
in some places, a moment when
two cells become one and is
a life of its own, but it isn’t
the convergence of sperm and ovum
we avoid, but the act leading to it.
When you are an adoptee
and only later in life discover
your now dead birthparents
that moment, that scene
is a small void in your life
among larger voids you want to,
but cannot ever, seem to fill,
so it is left to your imagination
of time, place, circumstances
and ultimately action, but you ensure
that scene ends moments before conception.

March 23, 2023

AND COUNTING

How many times
had they almost met
over the years before that evening?

What if the Fates
had allowed meetings,
what would have changed?
Likely everything, nothing,
for when they might have met
neither was available,
he a student imagining himself
already in love, or both married
never thinking those relationships
would possibly end in divorce.

And how many times had they
been in the same place
separated by moments or hours,
so many missed connections.

And then the moment of convergence
two lives forever changed,
two worlds merged
in an unanticipated joy.

February 18, 2023

GOING

You know where you want to go,
which is the first step in getting there,
but there are countless routes
you can take with a variety
of obstacles which you cannot see
until you have committed
to that route, and there is to be
no turning back once you choose
the route you intend to take.

Think about your selection,
do you want the route which seems
to be the shortest, or the longer one
which might have fewer obstacles
to overcome, or so it is said.

Or do you want to reconsider
going there, for the effort may
be great and the reward nominal,
so perhaps it is best if you simply
remain here in a place you well know.

January 22, 2023

POSER

For unknown reasons I
was told I was going to
sit for a portrait by a well
known local artist.

It was a gift, so I had
little choice but to accept,
and so I sat on a chair
frozen in place.

I asked how long it
would take and he replied
“Not more than four sittings
and then I can go to work.”

I pointed out that like
a Buddhist river, I could
never pose the same way
twice, each time would be different.

He smiled and said
the painting would be
a Post-modernist
so my pose hardly mattered.

January 16, 2023

FAMILIES USE IT DAILY

If I ask you a
where you are standing
what will you answer?
If I ask you
where I am standing
what will you answer?
If I ask you a
if we are standing
in the same place
and you answer yes
a blow from the stick,
if you answer no
a blow from the stick,
if you answer nothing
a blow from the stick.

A reflection on Case 69 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Charma Eye)

January 1, 2023

CIRCLING

This morning as the bell
signaled the end of morning zazen
the whistling ducks took up
their song, circling the wetland
as if inviting me to photograph them.

They quickly grew bored waiting
and flew off to a place
I do not know, can not imagine.

Perhaps they will return
this afternoon, circle
in a duck like pose as I capture
them with the long lens, and this
will satisfy them for another day,
but perhaps they will not return
and punish me again
for my morning absence.

November 17, 2022

ODE TO THE HOUSE CAT

I have concluded that God created the cat
in a moment of exhaustion or of extreme pique.
How else to explain such a soft fur covered creature
capable at once of a gentle caress and a claw
lunging out at a hand or face deemed too close.
Why else this projectile constantly launched
only at those places it was not to be,
fine wood tables etched with reminders
of its sudden presence and rapid departure.
What else to explain this shedding ball
of multihued fur that always curls in sleep
in the one place you wish to sit
and even when it cedes a seat to you, smirks
in the realization you will soon
an unexpectedly be half covered in fur.
Why this package of fluff and terror crawls
beneath your blanket as you verge on sleep
curls tightly against you and begins its gentle
rhythmic purring that draws you deeply
into a world of fur filled dreams.

First Published in ZOOANTHOLOGY, Sweetycat Press, August 2022

October 31, 2022

JOSHU’S BUDDHA

If you go in search of Buddha
should you see him, do
not stop or speak but run away.
If you do not see the Buddha
run away from that place.
If you stop, to take water
from the edge of a still pond
look carefully, for
the Buddha is there
just above the water’s surface.

A reflection on case 80 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)