CANOPY
Any story
can be rewritten.
Just go back
to the place
of disequilibrium,
to the wild canyon,
to the small bridge,
with an embrace,
an apology,
an acorn
in your heart.
Look to
the ancient oak
just there,
to the shelf
of fungi
beneath its heavy
bough and know
it is blessing you
imperceptibly
with its listening,
with a canopy
you can’t see,
telling a new story
that overwrites
everything
as you walk
deeper into the wild.
BUILDING THE BUILDING
Before the building
is the building,
the work,
the construction,
the architecture
climbing skyward
a piece at a time.
Before this,
the hole in the ground,
the ground breaking,
the consecration
of the site itself.
The blessing.
May we bless
the building of buildings
no matter the material.
THE SHRINE
The shrine is always there.
It’s right before us,
in every moment.
We either enter or we don’t.
When we don’t
it is often because we find fault
with the entrance itself—
with the way the hinges hang,
or the voussoir curves,
or how the keystone hovers
heavy above our heads.
Or even how the light falls
suspiciously upon the threshold.
When we make the entrance
and our aversion to it
the reason for not entering,
our souls suffer for it
and the place of worship
we might have come to know
becomes, out of neglect,
a derelict dwelling,
an abandoned shanty.
Our own failings, more times than not,
are the entrance. To meet the Buddha
we must pass through them.
COBWEB
The early morning light
filtering through the oak
turned the cobweb
hanging there
invisibly
into a shimmering
stitch of silk.
It was the only thing to see
in that moment,
in the vastness and silence
of the landscape
along the winding path,
and they both saw it.
Moments of this kind
are
so delicate,
so fleeting, in a forest
heavy with frost.
REALITY TV
A distant sky
suddenly got closer.
A flat screen TV
and its red roses
cavort for the one
bachelorette.
A pajama party,
giddy under blankets,
smacks its fragrant lips.
All the while
life moves like
an approaching
anniversary, holding
its breath before a candle
that burns brighter
as the days grow darker
and the pandemic is the norm
we know. A place to settle into.
THE SCOURGE
Yesterday I burned a pot black,
while steaming beets.
All the red-juiced water evaporated
when I wasn’t looking.
Was burned into thin air, leaving
the cookware scorched to a crisp.
I took steal wool
to the pot’s bottom
and scrubbed
my little heart out.
I did this on the day
the election results came in.
I scrubbed as hard as I could
to remove the scourge for good.
WIND
A breath blew up from the basin
through the golden grass
and past the ridge.
It buffeted you.
Teased and taunted you.
It did this every time
you walked this stretch of trail.
Without fail.
And each time this tussle took you
you felt elemental,
not separate, but a part
of the living landscape.
The wind saw you,
knew you, inhaled you.
Take that breath away
and the ridge becomes neglect
and all seeing ceases,
and the stillness is a suffering
that is human.
AS IT DID, SO DID WE
Beneath trees that towered over us
we walked through the moonlit park
on a narrow stretch of pavement
that gave way to dirt and meaty earth,
that gave way to a carpet of leaves.
And as it did
our shadows, like the path,
changed also.
A question moved between us:
Are we becoming trees?
AVALANCHE
More like
an avalanche
than a mountain.
More like denial
than addiction.
A blindness
bigger than
anything
unseen.
Yet anything
worth having
or inhabiting,
like humility,
requires empathy
over anger,
love over
arrogance.
Mountains
are avalanches
waiting to happen.
So are we.
So why not
make compassion
our igneous inside,
the matter
we carry within
our living lives.
Then when collapse
happens, we collapse
into kindness.
AMBIGUITY
hangs, in the heat of the night,
from an avocado tree, happy in her
hammock. I try to make sense out of
what she’s saying, but can’t. She’s throwing
me questions like knots I can’t answer,
can’t untangle fast enough. And because
I can’t her smile broadens. Broadens
until she disappears entirely, and all I can
see is the swooping arc of a dalliance in
the balance, swinging and swaying, among
the thick branches splayed against
the theater of night.
They appear out of nowhere.
Like thoughts sometimes do.
They fly around my kitchen
and become an irritant I must live with
that spreads from room to room.
They land on windows, walls, and mirrors,
on the glass in picture frames,
on the cupboard doors.
Perhaps it’s the fruit that’s turned
or the unemptied compost that has them
so suddenly and prodigiously appear.
Sometimes I think
the sink, the drain…
the pipes and the plumbing,
the building’s dark inner workings,
that wind behind the walls unseen,
are the source.
Yes, this is where the gnats
must come from, I think.
From a place like this.
I can lose hours in a day,
in a week, over weeks,
running around my small apartment
swatting at them,
working myself into a frenzy,
like an animal in a cage,
especially when I swing and miss.
They are almost invisible
and yet they are my enemy
–like thoughts are sometimes–
and I want to crush them,
because they are everywhere:
a buzzing so close to my ears.
I want to annihilate them.
Such a big word for such little threats.
But the gusto with which I go after them
is fueled by a ferocity no other word can carry.
I want to be a killer.
A speck of blood on the mirror …
is the victory I am after.
Or so I think.
