Do
you wish
to realize the Way?
Dissolve everything instantly,
like a drop of water
hitting a red-hot
coal.
Forget
thoughts and
feelings and ideas of self.
Remaining ordinary, foregoing airs,
persevering in simplicity for years
and decades, you enter
into the Oneness,
and it into
you.
Life is short,
though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place
beautiful.
Every
little thing is
sent for something,
and in that thing there should be
happiness and the power to make happy.
Like the grasses showing tender faces
to each other, thus we should do,
for this was the wish of the
Grandfathers of the
World.
Thunder
before dawn,
thunder through dawn,
thunder beings they were called.
It had to be a person or animal up there.
Outside, walking to my work shed the clouds
were low, almost black, and turbulent. You could
nearly jump up and touch them. I love thunder.
I could listen to it all day long. Like birdsong
it’s the music of the gods. How in childhood
I adored these cloud voices that could
lift me up above my troubles, far
above the birds. I’d look down
at their flying backs, always
in circles because earth
is round. What a gift
to have my work
shed shudder
with thunder.
