Nap time

 

I have been reading Zen poets.
Cold Mountain resents his limp,
his former married life,

his former neighbors,
and envies, I suspect,
the beauty of youth.

He's at his best
lying on moss, letting
icy creek water

clean his ears, or so
he says. I'll trust him
on that; it's not like I have

no resentments of my own!
Stonehouse is enamored
of his little clay stove

which he feeds leaves
while he sits close, listening
to gibbons down the mountain,

howling. Does he ever invite
them to tea? I'll trust that
he does, and lets them

sit warm with him in the long
winter. Great Fool is
my favorite; when not tacking

calligraphy to his walls
by his lone oil lamp, he
sets out briskly in rain

to ask housewives for
a little rice, and visit
children who bounce balls

and count. I lean back
in my squeaky chair
and sip a bit of yard

tea, this one mostly cats'
ear and stinky bob herbs.
Gee, if I could write poems

like these three, what would
that be like? Dogen said
don't write poems at all,

as narrative is a trap.
Please note: Dogen wrote
hundreds. One more

sip, and it's nap time for me.

Save the World

What a chair in shade does
is slow me down; knowing I will
be sitting there, just as the hot

zenithed sun frames my
early afternoon, I hunt
down dandelions and such

to make tisane, take a cup
of that and a book to
the table, lean back in the chair, 

sip, and read of hermits
in Chinese mountain ranges
with their clay stoves, thatch,

lotus-leaf robes and sometime
meals of nothing, sometimes
plums and cabbage. I might

nap, to wake as an apple
thumps nearby, then watch blue
and white clouds contend,

or even cross my legs and watch
again. Considering things
I'm not doing all that time,

what a chair in shade does
is save the world.

Meteor Night (a repost)

Meteor night rounds off the second week
of August. We spread an ancient carpet over
grass, and sweep it clean, then roll it up

to pass the first dew's fall. Friends come, bearing
food and vacuum bottles, blankets, pillows,
sweaters, and good cheer, staking out

what are believed to be the front-row seats.
The guests trail whiffs of basil, sage and mint
where cuffs encountered these along the path.

Sunset drains away from Jasper Mountain's
scree. A screen door bangs; small bodies hurtle
in and out of inner space. Tea

and coffee make their rounds, and someone says:

"I see a star -- the first!" Vega, usually,

unless it is a planetary summer.

One of the young ones knows his sky charts better

than we do; he walks us through the brighter stars,

small arm sweeping the great ecliptic:

"This is Regulus; the icy one is Altair;

And that is Arcturus." We tell him we like Arcturus;

a fire so heavy it looks a sullen lamp

following the sun to bed.

"Look, look," shout others sitting near. Some

turn, as often happens, a hair late;

the quick ones tell them what they've seen.

A spark has overrun an arc of sky

from beyond the neighbor's nodding cows,

fading as it neared the silent oaks.

We settle now to a serious evening's work,

this witnessing of evanescent shows

these pebbles make, vanishing in our air

-- all as it were to entertain frail creatures

hardly less ephemeral than themselves.

 

 

 

_________

This was written at the farm in the 1990s.

Tonight I sat out for a bit and saw two good meteors, the slim pink moon, a fan of clouds illuminated by it, many satellites, some southbound jets up high, and a big brightly illuminated jet, probably from Seattle, that circled low around me, passed the moon, and eased down toward the airport. No aurora, though I saw one in April. Mustn't be greedy.

 

A comment on Hongzhi's Zuochan zhen

The thing about Buddhas (there are many,
perhaps as many as grains of sand)
is that their being Buddhas is not an identity
(other than for convenience, as we are lazy)

but that they do something (without going
anywhere much, when it is what they do)
and that something is hard to speak of
(not that it's a secret or obscure, but because

nouns slide us far from where verbs are going).
Example (ha ha): while observing a growing
blade of grass, a Buddha observes growing,
letting "blade" and "grass" remain provisional,

unless of course it is time to mow (should a Buddha
chance to to live in a neighborhood
with a Home Owners' Association,
in which case there is no help for it). But letting

grasses grow, birds fly, and fishes swim
a Buddha settles a bit deeper into the lawn chair
in shade, and sips glorious tea, without even
thinking not to think "glorious tea," in which case

the grass greens greenly in full sun, the bird
pounces mercilessly upon the fish, the fish
gratefully remembers how kind was its river,
and the Home Owners' Association deeply bows.