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 know little of
ducks but that doesn’t matter.
I watch them closely.
Being myopic,
I see their passivity,
non-action, shimmer.
On these winter days,
I feel kinship, reverence.
Ducks show forth the Dao.
I say it again:
This crowded pub on snow days
is where I can think
inelimina-
ble and unappeasable
chaos. Outside,
in the snow blowing here and
there, the perfect Good.
”In the twinning of patience and striving, we are the porosity of being become mindful, become willing.” Desmond, The Voiding of Being, 203.
My old books are gone.
It’s different not having them.
Today on my walk
invisible snow
flakes kissed my ears (kiss means
my delight is theirs)
once or twice. A mild
day. No accumulation.
So yes, some laughs too.
If you get a good
title you can go on and
write. Metaxyturn
is a good title.
It means between god and us
is where it happens.
Flow becomes wave, time
space, meaning riddle-clear, and
we shut the fuck up.
”We wake up to ourselves as not-knowing before we know ourselves as desiring to know. There is the event of astonishment that carries into us the emphatic strike of an otherness that yet is intimately inward.” Desmond, The Voiding of Being, 232.
Young I’d get around
by train, cab, or bus. I’d walk
the rest of the way.
Only then alone.
Otherwise, never alone.
In community.
Now, if I feel like
watching the ducks seize the day,
I can just do it.
” ‘ Loving attention, John [John of the Cross] writes, ‘happens when the soul’s discursive acts and meditations cease.’ ” Simone Kotva, Effort and Grace (Bloomsbury), 155.
Too cold by the cove
so I turned up Broad Street and
walked past the lit shops.
So, walking in town
requires Stoic attention;
Nothing distracts you.
In the last cold block,
I saw the convenience
store and bought ice cream.
A space for thinking,
this wandering. But winter
has other ideas.
Halfway home, I can’t
form a thought. I’m becoming
landscape not inscape.
Low tide, bits of ice,
Canada geese half in, half
out, already home.
Where do the gulls go
on nights like this? All day spent
at odds with the winds
now gale force. Should I
dream, I’d glimpse white forms riding
the dark tossing waves,
but I’d rather hear
the occasional silence
between mindless gusts.
”On its own grounds—the contextless, arm’s length discourse of rational analysis—skepticism is indefeasible. But gestalt experience shows those grounds to be incomplete. This—thisness, this haecceity—is real; that’s the most obvious thing about it. That’s why we have to change our lives.” Jan Zwicky, The Experience of Meaning, 166.
The old goose couple
honked loudly, demanding
charity. ”I’m not
the one you want,” I
said, guiltily. She is not
here; I’m passing through.”
Their orange bits shown
in the winter sun. My white
face blushed for shame. We
depend on others.
Their glares touched my stupid heart.
I waited with them.
”…however dark the times, there is always cause for celebration and joy. This being, this one— and this and this, and this. The extraordinary music of existence, which, as long as there is something rather than nothing, sounds through each of us.” Jan Zwicky, The Experience of Meaning, 174.
work-in-progress
Should I wait or write
another poem? The cold
is in my fingers.
Anchor lady says,
“Cold is hard on the old!” Muse
says, “I’ll hold your hand.
We’ll count syllables
together—contingencies
the stuff of obits.”
A fly interrupts
the conversation, its buzz
beyond beautiful.
Metaxyturn Diaries 