the variety of decisions that revolve around desire:
Nutella chocolate chip with sea salt, pistachio lemon
creme, or cinnamon amaretto swirl? Where is human nature
so weak as in the ice cream section of a 24-hour grocery store?
And really, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg,
only one layer of this rainbow-shingled world shiny with neon
and digital contraptions, sprinkled with add-ons. He is tempted
to pack up his new digs in the city and tell his young family
that they’re moving to the country, to an island in Micronesia,
somewhere they can hang laundry to dry on the line, collect rain
water in barrels, plant their own tomatoes, squash, and bitter
melons, send the kids to school and watch them walk down
the dirt path in flip-flops without worrying about
their safety— But he’s promised his wife he’ll try
to find a way to live in the jangly heart of the metro,
practice what he’s always talking about in coffee shops:
simplification and letting go, right where it is. And right
where it is is right here, right now: in many ways, it is
the biggest challenge to The Noble Eightfold Path, which all
the teachings describe as “the most straightforward approach”
to human life and suffering, except that the latter are anything
but straightforward. As for instance, even in this small
frozen section of the universe, where desire after desire
jostles for his attention and his wallet— blackberry cobbler,
peaches and cream, orange creamsicle, black walnut crunch—
he knows the impossibility of satisfaction, the reverie
that purchase promises but cannot in the end provide.
Goth
At the office all the morning. At noon Sir Williams both and I at a great fish dinner at the Dolphin, given us by two tar merchants, and very merry we were till night, and so home. This day my wife and Pall went to see my Lady Kingston, her brother’s lady.
At the office, I am
a fish in the dolphin.
Tar me and err.
Night is my wife, a pall my king.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 15 March 1660/61.
The therapist explains to the Buddha
the concept and effects of “Catastrophizing”
using references to Chicken Little, Pooh
Bear, Wile E. Coyote, and The Roadrunner.
He understands everything perfectly in his mind,
having had many occasions to dispense similar advice
to others through the years. Nonetheless he is charmed
by this new cast of colorful characters and how they
play out one worst case scenario after another—
There is a crack in the ceiling of heaven! The sky
is falling! There is a raincloud growing larger above
my head! He likes when the therapist explains
that the honey-colored bear with the ample belly
resembling his in some art works, is our baseline condition:
at rest, without stress, comfortable and at ease in the wood
of the world. But the agitated chicken, the wound-up coyote
and the perennially ruffled bird are ready
not only to leap on the first train of worry, but also
to ride the same crooked track that has gouged itself
so deep into the landscape it has no other
destination but down. Just stay on the platform,
says the therapist whose first name in Welsh
means pure-hearted: Not so fast. Let’s make a list
of why your world right now is not about to end.
[poem temporarily hidden by author]
In response to Via Negativa: Salt.
Harbingers
After months under snow,
last autumn’s leaves
barely stir in the wind,
pressed flat as ears
to the forest floor.
Surely they know what’s coming.
Stones lie askew.
Whatever is beneath them shows no sign
of resting in peace.
Who will carry for me
when I can no longer carry, who will fold
the sleeves of garments back and away
from the wrists that ferry such quantities
of water, passing them down and along
the line? And who will attend the calendar
of hours between one shuttering of the sky
to the next, rouse to brief screenings
of air and light, gather the abundant
moisture of clouds for softness in future days?
Who will pin on the breast of the querulous
moment one fragrant lotus whose meaning
is All, in time, will be well?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Text worker
With Sir W. Batten and Pen to Mr. Coventry’s, and there had a dispute about my claim to the place of Purveyor of Petty-provisions, and at last to my content did conclude to have my hand to all the bills for these provisions and Mr. Turner to purvey them, because I would not have him to lose the place. Then to my Lord’s, and so with Mr. Creed to an alehouse, where he told me a long story of his amours at Portsmouth to one of Mrs. Boat’s daughters, which was very pleasant.
Dined with my Lord and Lady, and so with Mr. Creed to the Theatre, and there saw “King and no King,” well acted.
Thence with him to the Cock alehouse at Temple Bar, where he did ask my advice about his amours, and I did give him it, which was to enquire into the condition of his competitor, who is a son of Mr. Gauden’s, and that I promised to do for him, and he to make [what] use he can of it to his advantage.
Home and to bed.
I claim the place of purveyor
of petty visions: my hand is lace,
my creed an alehouse,
a long story is a mouth
as pleasant as amours.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 14 March 1660/61.
Salt
The highway’s tar
has been bleached by
a winter’s worth of salt,
and in the mid-day sun
it almost shines. I squint
at the shapes on the shoulder—
here the humped corpse
of some salt-lover, there
a fetal curl of flayed tire.
How long can you sit still
in one place, not blinking, not twitching, not scratching
an itch on the far side of your back, not even to shield
with a broad leaf from the peepal tree your face from the sun?
How long can you suffer the noise of passing rickshaws,
jeering children, the ungainly parade of goats and cattle,
quizzical stares from passersby, the village simpleton’s
dropped jaw from wondering in a brief moment of lucidity
if his place of honor has just been usurped? And how long
can you listen past the drone of dragonflies and the chorus
of frogs at night, during the day the swish of scythes
in unison moving across the fields for reaping? The well
of silence is long and deep and full of echoes.
Birds fly across the opening, where the sky is framed
as through a porthole in a ship, a piece of glass
at the end of a long telescope. Rain, twigs, and stones
drop unseen into its depths, and it is difficult to hear
how long it takes each of them to reach the mossy bottom.
The death of winter
On a warm day,
a patch of ice dulls over
like a dead eye,
except that something moves
under and through it,
like the soul—
that bubble of breath—
surrounded by meltwater
and the bluebird’s song.