Bay Avenue Meditation (每精通五行)

 

Along the crook

Of Fourth Neck to

Its most easterly extent

Proceeding out on

A thin isthmus

Of asphalt and doubt

To a wooden bench

At the end of the pier

Where only tenuously

Connected to the

Sandbar behind me 

I sit and reflect upon

The sky’s reflection

And surrender to

The still wintry air

Watching daylight ascend

In layers and columns

To a higher redoubt

A dog barks

Down the street

A serene breeze

Stirs the red

Bandana affixed

To a pole

In the mouth

Of the Bay --

A slight tremor portends

Elijah and his fiery chariot

May finally be drawing near

Each packet of wind

Has its own trope

This is no projection

Or sympathetic fallacy

Merely an observation

Of the tendencies

On clear display

Out here in the harbor

As reality goes about its task

Defining a clear smooth path 

Out past the No Wake zone and

Through the Bay’s fill and chop 

Clear beyond the Point of No Return

As the waters continue parting

With a slight nod of the crown

Drawing us onward

Into the far greater depths

That lie straight ahead

Another Year

It’s Christmas day

And anomalously

Just now I plucked

A dandelion from the

Front lawn with a white

Plumose Crown

And my mother said
To me: You can’t
Be too sure otherwise

Those seeds will be airborne
Before we get to New Year’s

And I thought to myself 
Another year another war

But it seems as if

This time around

With trowel close to hand
And a new Moon sitting
Two fingers adrift in
The western sky

The spheres have turned
And the growing season 

Is already here

 

On Hold Christmas Day - 2014 (每精通五行)

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for Frank

  

It’s Christmas Day

And just now when you

Asked me to hold

I noticed a few

Snowflakes

Drifting by

On the computer

Screen as if scattered

By some Java script

Onto the email below and then

I overheard you speaking

With the X-ray technician which

Didn't exactly fill me with

Holiday cheer and it being 50

Degrees plus out here on 

The East End I figure

That virtual snow is all

We’re likely to see on

Christmas this year

Frank on Christmas Day - 2014

On the Five Phases of the Spirit's Journey (每精通五行)

How robust life is

In all respects

The rapid recovery

Truck sits just beyond

The front lawn all day long

Capable of addressing

Present disasters even if  

Woefully inadequate

When it comes to  

Those we imagine

 And how our continued

Sense of well being hangs

By the slenderest of threads

Through many harvests  

Through regime change

And bottoming out

In short through

All five phases of Being

When at last we emerge

From Reality’s cocoon

Our term of imprisonment

Under Five Phase Mountain

Having been abruptly commuted

Upon the arrival of

A dragon with wings
Tipped with pennants of fire

A rapid recovery truck outside the window

A Wintry Mix

For Christine Stansell

Chongyam Trungpa

Steve Davis and all

The other mentors

Real or imagined

Who taught by example

 (good and/or bad)

About the dangers

And rewards of

Mixing the personal

With the spiritual

And political realms

How the Lotus of Life unfolds

In the most intricate of ways

Please understand

From now until

New Year’s more

Than a fortnight hence

I have no frigging idea

On any given night whether

I'll end up in bed alone

Gnashing my teeth

Blessed or utterly stoned

Which was the very same

Wintry mix displayed

On the streets

Of Midtown yesterday

A surcharge of the craziness

We’re lately awash in

Anguish and insight  

With an antic twist
It's a two-step line dance called
The Armageddon Shuffle

In this case arising as a

Column of protest marchers

Chanting that Black Lives Matter

Made its way up 6^th Avenue

Into the heart of Herald Square

Where a phalanx of Drunken Santas

Had already laid claim to the turf

In their riotous good cheer

They careened about

Under the street lamps

Swaying and cantilevered

Undeterred as the

Marchers proceeded

Uptown and East

While helicopters

Hovered overhead

And a cordon of cruisers

With blue and red flashing lights

Sealed off all alternate

Routes of escape

Hemmed in

On all four sides

Of the barricades

We were laid bare

In the urban grid

 Drawn and quartered

By the same police power

Those of us angry

And those of us willing

And those of us

Besotted too

All of us could

Suddenly see

Exactly where

Things stood

Finally - A Reply to Meditation #17

God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war,
some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all.   

John Donne, Meditation 17 

Enlightenment 

Entails a stutter step

Or a stammering

Thanks to the absurdity

Of the Brightness

If you're unprepared

It can be hazardous

To your health

The equivalent

To a stroke or

A Richter 10 quake

But how unlike

A beast is humankind

That we can lift

Our hind legs upward

In prayer (not merely

to urinate)

Over our heads

In submission

To the laws of

Anti-gravity

And while sitting

On the mat if you tell

Me not to ask

For whom the bell tolls

Or the siren wails

I’ll take comfort

In knowing that

It wails for me

Celebrating the
Not-self's return

A Poem for Bodhi Day

For Jonathan Stalling


From Emptiness to Enlightenment

Is but a short step (or leap) off

The end of a long dark period

As quite suddenly old Gutei

Lifts a single finger and

The first Nen clears its throat

Ready to speak of its own accord
 
 

A Sur-reply to Wallace Stevens

I wrote this stanza answering to a double prompt - (i) a photo (copied below) that I saw posted on Facebook of footsteps trailing off in a field of snow, which basically looked like a calligraphy for half of a Chinese character or so, and (ii) Wallace Stevens' great poem The Snowman.

For the wanderer

Who treks through the snow

And beholds the Nothing

That is there along with

Various other things 

Paled by abstraction
And contingency 

The title of this poem is a cross-reference to a few of my earlier poems that were addressed to Stevens, including one which you can read by clicking here.   But what this new stanza reflects is how lately I've been considering whether The Snowman reflects a Buddhist view of Nothing (as a number of American critics seem to think it does)  as opposed to that of an American modernist insurance executive?  There are many types of Nothing and Stevens, for the most part, seems to stick to thinking about it in a spare positivist framework, at least that's how his mind of winter strikes me - not quite yet inclined to see Enlightenment as the ultimate payoff of Emptiness.

The mind of winter may also be the least of it.  How about this as a further sur-reply: 

For the wanderer

Who treks through the snow

And beholds the Nothing

That is there and even more so

Knows not just the sheer abstraction

Of the landscape but also

Endures its coldest contingencies

Must contend with something

Much more severe than

The mere mind of winter