THE JUGGLER’S EYES

I didn’t listen to Rabbit,

who taught me how to juggle.

Stay away from the trees, she said, 

the branches will pluck

what you’re juggling

right out of the air.

I didn’t listen.

I just went right on juggling.

And for reasons

I didn’t quite understand

I became bewildered 

and befuddled by my

little circus act. And then,

sure enough, like Rabbit 

had predicted, a tree took 

what I had been tossing

up and down, from 

hand to hand, 

and left me empty-handed

with nothing to juggle.

I sat down beneath those branches

like the Buddha at the base

of the bodhi tree,

and waited—waited 

for the season to change,

for the tree to lose its leaves,

for the tree to give me back

what was mine. And sure enough, 

when autumn came,

the leaves fell from their limbs

and with them dropped 

what I had tossed 

too high. I picked the little orbs up

off the ground and put them 

where they belonged, back 

in their sockets.

It was then that 

I finally saw how 

blind I had been

to my own blindness,

and just had to laugh.

I howled like Coyote,

and was grateful,

so grateful, for a taste 

of my own medicine

and the genius in its trickery.