When you come
into this town
we know you are coming,
when you enter
this room we
know you will arrive.
It is only when
we cannot discern
your presence
that your spirit
has truly arrived.
Contemplate this
over a bowl of rice
shared with mountain
and wind.
A reflection on Case 18 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)
There are two principal problems
with Ireland, and I found both
to be utterly insurrmountable.
Every town, even Galway City
at any time of day or night
looked like it should be a postcard.
Add to that the horror that in
every pub I visited it was assumed
that if asked I would sing a song
or, realizing I have no singing
voice, I would recite a poem
from William Butler Yeats
which I sadly could not, yet after
the third pint of Guinness
I could, I think, recite my name.
Just outside town
in the old dump is
a slab of concrete
its twisted edges pierced
by rusting rebar
once the floor
of the gazebo in the commons.
Etched into its surface
Jim + Marie
Janet Loves Eddie.
Their loves were undying
cast into stone to wear
slowly through the ages
not to fall victim
to the jackhammer.
Jim lies under
the simple stone
“Sgt. U. S. Army
Served Vietnam,”
Marie left for college
but came home,
a nurse at the Community Hospital
now divorced with two daughters.
Eddied married Sue,
three times runner up
for homecoming queen
and lives in a trailer
by the county line.
Janet waits tables
in the coffee shop
at Caesar’s Palace while
her husband, whom she met
at the truck stop,
deals blackjack in the casino.
Their son lives in San Francisco
with his lover, but
they haven’t spoken to him
in more years
than they can remember.
The old gazebo was replaced
years ago by the giant
steel play gym.
First published in Green Silk Journal, Spring 2020
https://www.thegsj.com/spring-2020-.html
The wonder of clocks in old towns and cities
is that few actually care if the time
they portend is accurate or an approximation.
The importance often seems inversely
proportional to the size of the place in which
it is called upon to render a temporal verdict.
Best of all are the clocks whose hands
have ground to a halt, or gone missing,
for they are the philosophical seers,
sent to remind us that time is our construct
and in the grand scheme of things
exists only because we demand it to do so,
and long before the clock we got along
sufficiently well by being always
and forever in the present moment.
Once, not long ago,
a river meandered
through our town.
Actually, there was
never a river here,
and our town is really
a small and shrinking city.
But the wistful look
on your face when I
mentioned the river is
reason enough to have one.
So now I have to move
somewhere in Connecticut
or Massachusetts, or start
digging a large channel
through downtown.
Hand me a shovel,
I hate New England.
Once, not long ago,
a river meandered
through our town.
Actually, there was
never a river here,
and our town is really
a small and shrinking city.
But the wistful look
on your face when I
mentioned the river is
reason enough to have one.
So now I have to move
somewhere in Connecticut
or Massachusetts, or start
digging a large channel
through downtown.
Hand me a shovel,
I hate New England.
The dolphin knows
precisely when to feed
when to bless the day
when to swim south
feels the pull of the tides.
Each day at noon
he walks across the factory floor
around lathes,
shavings, and up
the metal staircase
into the small office
its windows overlooking
the shop floor and pushes
the red button
mounted on the wall.
The whistle peals over town
as people glance reflexively
at their watches.
When asked, he says
it is always precisely noon
never sooner, never later
he is certain, for he checks
the clock on the steeple
of the ancient church
set each Friday by the parson
to insure God’s work
is promptly done.
Each day at ten before six
the parson climbs the ancient
wooden steps into the bell tower
and staring at his watch, waits
until the hands align
then leans into the rope
as the bell rings out six times
then he climbs down and walks
across the neatly trimmed lawn
to the small white clapboard
house that sits on the edge
of the cemetery behind the church.
It is precisely six he says
for each day at noon
he sets his watch
to the factory whistle.
Walking down this road
I would like to see a rice field
golden in the morning sun
with a great mountain rising behind it
just around the next bend.
I would settle for a town
its lone Temple quiet, awaiting
the morning bell, the call to sit,
with maybe a cat at the base
of a statue the Bodhisattva.
I am ready to bow deeply
to the first monk I see this day,
but my reverie is broken
by the barely dodged wave
thrown up by city bus
running late and fast
down the crowded street of
this upstate New York city.
No one is certain who
painted the words on the wall.
No one knew when the painting occurred,
someone noticed the words
one morning and told others,
and the word spread through town.
People stopped to look at the words,
but few understood what they meant.
Soon there were pictures drawn
around the words, familiar faces,
and people would stop, add words
until the wall was a mural
that could not be forgotten,
only ignored by those
who simply wouldn’t understand.
an old writer and his words 