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.
I mosey past the
cove under towering clouds.
Not that long ago
in New York, I’m the
duck in the shining pond. Each
hour a dollar made
or lost. Sunset falls
and the streets light up. But now
it’s home to my books.
”…the kenotic passing of creative change…” Desmond, G&B 298
There are no words for
the trochaic build of clouds
on spring’s horizon.
Distant thunder. White
immobility. The Bay
reflecting a
duck on its swell of
time. The ocean of air be-
tween us we share: home.
Sometimes I wonder
how I can live without sex,
I mean the loving
interpersonal
kind. I suppose if I loved
more, I’d know. I love
small perfect poems
and the mind that gives them birth.
No more and no less.
Patience is among
the virtues, but in old age
passivity is
better. Long phone calls
about death with the dying
seem to go nowhere.
But I love the sound
of her voice, the beauty, when
I stop listening.
My old friend across
the Bay has heard I take walks.
Have you tried a cane?
she asks. We look at
the same clouds, same water. We
watch the same geese fly
over. Like Herbert’s
flower we glide through life. Let’s
not talk about canes.
Patriotic red
and blue bunting lines the street
for tomorrow’s fete.
Sparrows in the trees
seem excited; maybe that’s why.
I can’t remember
the occasion. Folks
will come for their own reasons.
Parades are like that.
A hot day in June.
While I’m on my walk, the cat
vomits on the rug.
Yes, I’m paranoid.
The heat this spring is early,
the swans absent from
their mudbank at the
far end of the silent cove.
Now slow attention
is political.
I see the cove through the eyes
of raw fear and guilt.
”It is in the ecstasy of life that the energy of eternity is communicated.” William Desmond, G&B 295
I sit under a
pine and look out at the swans.
It takes no effort.
Their white forms bob in
the hot light, cooling me off.
The forms that rest me
are not the pure facts
of Plotinus, one who believed
in simplicity.
NEAR PROVIDENCE 6.6.21
In a pink dress and
straw hat a little girl wades
a little way in-
to the Bay. Between
the rules and experience
she wavers, her mind
thrilled. She waits for her
mother to call out to her
the name she can’t stand.
