Breadcrumbs

GERARD SARNAT

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.

• • •

MICHELLE WHITTAKER

Down-and-Out sleepwalk
hand-in-hand like two lone star ticks
found buried above the sternum.

Watch them trance.
Watch them yawn
wilderness into a nighttide.

Often, Down-and-Out transmit
their anesthetic touch to the other, although
they decided not to conceive children.

But how might they continue
traveling turpentine bloodlines
in this bog-iron island?

Watch them headtrip.
Watch them overthink as a single them,
strobing through the pinelands

while gorging into the sand gully
of pine tar and vanishing foxes.
Watch them no longer concerned

they might split as they release
care about the rocky beaches
former self. The glacial physique.

When Down-and-Out exchanged vows
sub-secretly just like the late-stage
of Lyme disease, who also understood

what it means
on trying to stay together
in sickness and in helpless,

even when 12,000 years tried
putting in a bright repeat
of parental advice about sustainable living,

perhaps from the supervening
or superstitions, they woke their wishes
to un-hear the veracious warnings.

• • •