Sunday afternoon.
I give myself a pedi-
cure and take a walk.
Low tide. Sun on the
mudflats. The horizon bright
with the sound of geese.
As Zhuangzi says, this
is also a that. Nothing
compares with the Il-
lumination of
the Obvious. Haiku and
Zen go together.
You again, old swan,
your feet in the mud under
the pier, you whiter
than the Autumn sun,
than the dying year. Tonight,
we drink Hibiki.
There are depths on sun-
ny days, too. Awake to your
idiot self, in-
ner duck, and float on
shining cloud surfaces. No
one need know but you.
Yet another day,
yet another cup of tea
as the traffic dies.
I turn on the lights
as I put away the things,
and in the quiet
feel the shock thinkers
talk about. It is stunning
that it is at all.
Another holi-
day without you, another
walk to the cove. But
a Canadian
goose, also out for a walk,
also overdressed,
and out of its el-
ement, though when it stepped a-
side, I could go on.
Too cold for a walk
really but the ducks paddled
away chatting —a
family outing.
Feet numb, ears freezing, I stood
there smelling the first
pie you baked for me
that summer in Providence.
You knew your apples.
I look down the road.
The houses look smaller with-
out the pinks and greens
of their small gardens,
smaller and less well-cared for,
less significant.
The only beauty
left to observe on my walk
is the play of light.
It happens with each
step I take, as various
as love to the saints.
Where fresh and salt mix,
rain in my face, wind in my
ears, I seek myself.
I didn’t come out
here to see it but to feel
what it feels—the swan.
In the dark chop, the
swan looks past its image to
what it knows below.
Just another day
in the pandemic. We have
lost count of the dead.
We bring the children
to watch the swans in the cove.
So big and so white.
The children laugh to
see them stick their long necks in-
to the dark water.
We’re forbidden to
say goodbye to the dying
or to see them go.
On the breakwater,
the winter sun at high noon,
the light strips things to
transparency: soul
reading the bright page of keen
attention, there is
a forgetting of
self, cold, my presence, there’s just
the flowing passage.
Into the glister
of the cove two ducks disap-
pear. Just about o-
vercome my eyes tear-
up and I lose track of them.
I leave them to it.
