Everything is Waiting

Everything is waiting for you

Even when it seems 

The other way around   

As if you're on the waiting end

Standing on the corner

On a muggy evening in June

Waiting

Waiting for something to happen

Anything really

The whole weight 

Of human history

Is like a heavy set of keys

Jangling in your pocket

*  *  *  *  * 

The prompt for this poem was a photo (reproduced below) which was posted my Michael Murray on his Facebook page under the caption Everything is waiting for you.   Love the photo and the caption so thought they might make for a good poem. 

Two Truths Shared By Me and the Sparrow

A truth or two shared

by me and the sparrow

resides simply in what

it means to be alive

As we are both thereby

susceptible to wound and

yet simultaneously 

blessed as participants

in the endless saga of

enlightenment

Today is April 8th which is National Draw-a-Bird Day.  I can't draw so I wrote this poem instead and borrowed this drawing by Wendy Olsell from the Draw-a-Bird Day Archives.  Draw-a-Bird Day is a celebration of a practice developed by WW II veterans convalescing on a hospital ward who began drawing birds to speed on their recovery.

Another Poem About Suchness

This is from a new series of poems I've been writing over the last few weeks on the theme of Suchness.

Tonight I heard all

That a young spring thrush

Knows about Suchness

As it kept proclaiming

Thus and such with just

A slight nod of its head

All while fully explaining

The 3,000 realms

One chirp at a time

For a million years
Straight through the night

You can read more poems from this series on my new poetry blog here:  Lampoetry

Keeping a Watch on our Cultural Gatekeepers: a short reply to Cynthia Ozick

Dear Editor: 

I think a brief response is in order to this Sunday’s cover essay in the NYT book review, The Novel’s Evil Tongue by Cynthia Ozick.  The gist of Ozick’s essay is to suggest how all of literature is somehow derived from the impulse to gossip, which in turn can be traced right back to the serpent’s blandishments to Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.  So Ozick concludes – “The instant Eve took in that awakening morsel of serpentine gossip, Literature in all its variegated forms was born.”  You can read the rest of Ozick's essay here.

Oh please.  I have enjoyed Ozick’s short stories from time to time, and this essay too is written with her usual flair.  But talk about wrapping yourself up in self-justificatory myth. In this case Ozick pulls the coverlet down over her eyes and better judgment, as she tries to draw a direct line from the opening chapters of Genesis on down the line through the entirety of world of literature, briefly touching down on Austen and Proust and a few of her other favorites, to establish all of literature’s direct descent from Biblical creation myth.

The problem, of course, is that this is a completely myopic view of literature, closed off from the slightest attempt at understanding or accounting for literary traditions other than our own.  There are more things in heaven and earth, and in literature too, than are dreamt of or carried around in our own cultural baggage.

Has Ozick ever heard of Bhagavad Gita, I wonder, or Li Bai or Haruki Murakami, for that matter?   I thought by now the NY Times Book Review would be well beyond promoting such a limited conception of what literature is or means.   For those who are curious to learn about traditions other than those derived from our favorite serpent, I would direct your readers’ attention to the wonderful compendium Readings in Chinese Literary Thought by Stephen Owen, which provides a very cogent explanation of how one great literary tradition (truly as vast as ours) has evolved from creation myths and world views entirely different from our own.

Joe Lamport

http://www.lampoetry.com 

A Short Note to Non-Self

The quantum of spiritual energy

Is smoothly dispersed across

A wide range of meditative states
From benign mindfulness to tantric bliss

We gain entree to this vast dim realm
Where self just sits and sits  

Until one day quite suddenly 
From basement to firmament
The landscape becomes bathed
In a sufficiency of light
As non-self discovers its tongue
 And gives voice to a wordless hymn

On the Emptiness of life

Poem First Written as a Tweet

This is a poem I first wrote as a tweet after stumbling out of the garden with this treasure in my hands - a gnarled Catalpa root:

Even the lowliest root may partake 

Of the soaring majesty of a Brancusi 

Given the right light place and time

Poem Written After Sunset Looking East While Standing on the Bank of Weesuck Creek

Perched for

Another beatitude

Or two on the edge

Of the guard rail

At the ass end of our street

Reality takes on

Its ink stained aspect

The dim ripples demonstrate

Time stretching out

Towards the horizon

A heron settles on its nest

A dog barks nearby

Ready for supper and 
While the mind expatiates
There's darkness
For all the rest