Time’s tattered tight like
contained bap of cymbals–
organized static, directionalized
tension, splashes of water
in a musical groove
Damped in pattering the patina,
diffused in the rippling of the cloth
softened abutment grazing
frontier like nainsook
wisping on skin
~ Lady
Laying flowers side by side on the table
to array the palette of a bouquet, my jackleg fingers
in this matter remembering the words of
Thich Nhat Hanh, “leave space in
between things.”
Looking towards learning skillful compositions,
juxtapositions of color and shape and mood, so many
ways to make and discover frontiers
Which reminds me of you–how you
would have every day novel, a zany birthday party
on a dance floor platform for whirling happiness, your
camera curiosity seeking out photos like the world
is full of easter eggs, and it is
Yet sometimes the spicy lightning
of your attention’s like you’re zapping barbed xrays
of unjust situations with moralizing words–promising
them their comeuppance
Condemnation of entire domains
heuristically earned yet with wild daisies of grace
sprouting exceptions to the rules and you smile with
surprise like the cheer of holding my hand and running
through a sprinkler
I’m growing a whole bunch of exceptions for you,
a lawn, a street, a town, a county, a country, the world–
I’m gathering them and the other flowers
for the fiesta of our lives
~ Lady
Prescribing plucks on a zither in the zone of denoted dust for the genius of my body’s receptors like an engineer pavlovs a fuzzy solution. I can identify and achieve my goals chunking the mind down into lung dogged meditation in two-way osmosis phone with tinny or rich background noise. I can transform step by step by step.
~ Lady
A koto chord splays
like a kiri wood door opening
the resonant center
of the universe
A woman bends in her obi
over a just so stand of flowers
petal rich colors against the shoji
very domo very
~ Lady
Body
Rising from bed
Guided by the vagaries
Of grace–inside, a filament, a
Witness
~Lady
Maybe
Lotus found mind,
Object which contemplates
And maybe bone found lips to fill
A flute
~ Lady
SOMETIMES INSIGHT
One side of the knife
and the other, too
Different takes
on the cake
Parallax appetite
~ Lady
Zen Bone
Two traveling monks
come upon well-dressed woman
stymied by street run with mud.
Old man scoops her up
carries her across
and silent sets her spotless down.
Many quiet miles later
the young monk reproaches the old,
“You know it is forbidden for us to touch females.”
“You still carrying her?”
he laughs,
“I set her down hours ago.”
– Smith, 3.23.2014
Today’s and yesterday’s poems are my versions of koans in Zen Flesh Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings by Paul Reps, Nyogen Senzaki, 1957.
Zen Flesh
Monk running from tiger
climbs down vine over valley
hangs high over hard rock below
brief respite of is twixt void and abyss
when squeak brings his eye
to mouse gnawing through vine
hungry fur above
hard low below
despair in his belly
he sees one lone strawberry
big red and glowing
growing from cliff
plucks it
and eats with pure bliss
– Smith, 3.22.2014
Our corner now, and as Lady envisions it a decade from now:
HelloMotherEarth.net.