Recent Poetry, April 2020

What I Like About Zen 
This non-thing you can’t talk about, 
You have to speak of, even shout. 
Koans, they make you take the fall, 
About what can’t be spoke, that’s all.




Walking on the Charles River 
Now Eric has to take me, 
It’s not what he signed on for, 
And every step is hard work, 
But I still remember the time, 
When I walked easily everywhere I wanted.
And I wish for those times to return. 
They haven’t, yet. 
But sometimes I am still happy, 
Just seeing the earth come back to life, 
In the Spring.



Walking Along the Charles River II 
An annual miracle: 
The earth wakes up, 
After seeming to be dead, 
For several months. 
I never get over it.



What I Like About Orthodox Christianity 
When Jesus woke up, he didn’t think it odd, 
That he was what had been referred to before as “God,”
But anointed by this seeing, he understood the Fall,
And could do nothing else but offer himself, for all. 
And the pan-en-theism, such as we were taught, 
Was truly wrong, making of “God” a nought. 
And the church, inadequately, full of Gold and Goo, 
Turned out, by that very inadequacy, to point to true.



The World Is on Fire 
Maybe the world is on fire, 
And maybe we are burning with it. 
And if we could just see that,
It would change the way we saw everything. 
Maybe the world isn’t on fire, 
And we are all inert. 
And if we could just see that,
It would change the way we saw everything.
 It doesn’t much matter.