Every plant a man has given me
I have killed
though i have loved and tended to
and I have felt the fuzz of a petal between my thumb
meditated on its softness
They sit in their pots
soil caked
tawny crisp edges
drying and dying
while I pour my heart and bloodcut screams
into something else dying from the inside
Moths, moths, moths.
The grandmother who still smiles out from a turnip carved
to be mostly teeth and watching, to house a heat and shimmer
that will leave it just like it leaves all things
can help you. You leave this unburied knot, this knob,
a glass of water, every night, and let it prove to you
the people you love are not lost,
that you in seeking out the voices of the dead
are found enough forever.
Lilac stalk’s a hail Mary in the dead of winter,
salve to all my copped promises. I drive, loping
through spent apple orchards – snow collapses
off shingles, trees shudder and unburden
themselves, but I am not like them –
since you are gone I run hot.
My core, burnt honey that sings
through me, ossifies. I show the man
a picture of a flower you loved and apologize
for its prettiness. Want,
in the dumb charge of grief, to feel
each pluck, each singe and do. I am
mute, my pain glacial and sharp
as a scalpel. Outside the people walk past,
their toes clanging in frozen boots
– I cannot go home. I watch purple bloom
the blood at my wrist, bend my body tonic
to elegy. Caught in the back of my throat,
a prayer for spring.
Travelling artist knocked today
Blinking twice I stood in awe
Captivated by my treasured glass
You swaggering up my path, two in tow,
Such exuberance in your presence
Commanding my attention.
My world of me and me
Became a world of four,
Clapping hands I went from
View to view
A shy girl behind closed doors
Peeping
As you took over my playroom floor.
The grass, the stones, the path
Was yours to browse,
While I inside, a prisoner of the day,
You my wonderful distraction
As you grazed and snoozed like me
But roaming free.
Studying your skin like snow
Against the dying sun,
One eye on the smaller two
As they danced upon their stage,
I was gloriously entertained within my cage
Glad to have stumbled upon your play.
Riveted I was, watching you.
Do call again. And thank you for today.
1. Mid-Septuagenian Blues
Was sort of a bull
back in salad days
when tongue still pink
but now I am more idle cow
what with dangling taste buds
extended to chew like Ger’s cud.
2. Inner Climate Change haiku
Is love the world’s glue?
You blame yourself and others.
Ban hate’s distractions.
Bless your past wisely.
Try not to acclimatize
to autobiographies.
Being human is
a bit more intense than most
of us can handle.
3. Anattā* haiku
Self is the center
of narrative gravity’s
rising and falling.
* non-self in Pali
4. Awaking From Delusion haiku
Heart-mind ambushes
morph into nonviolence
toward self and others.
Dharmic eyes create
room: streams then merge together
this present moment.
5. The only thing to it is to do it.
Snug as two bugs in a rug
after 50 years together,
a bit smug that these salad
days might last forever,
I realize one of us will be
ferryperson for the other.
Can our comparing minds
find ways to freedom
through peaks and valleys
of dharma practice’s
attempt to decrease both
clinging & suffering.
Wow, you did a swell job
when falling down!
Do we ever give ourselves
credit for disasters--
failed meditation or taking
care of grandkids?
You can’t despise yourself
into becoming a better
person but it’s quite possible
to love selves to death:
every karmic rollercoaster
ride wakens some heart.
More than those theoretical
strategies, actual
resonances wash through as
loving then spirals
toward ultimate acceptance
and even surrender.