Recent Poetry: May 2023

 

Living Forever

Death’s an illusion. So is birth.

(And so are carrots, for what it’s worth).

Once you’ve seen what’s really real,

Eternity is no big deal.

 

Death

We all are racing to the grave,

That is what my grandma said.

She didn’t yell, nor rant, nor rave.

But spoke her truth, then went to bed.

But I need to be reminded,

Each few minutes, doncha see.

Otherwise I end up blinded,

As with other beings like me.

 

Trinity

It’s not in the Bible,

(Thank God)

It just means that “god”

Is not reducible to monad. He’s

More interesting than that.

It also avoids the trap of dualism.

Which always manifests as mean,

Eventually.

Three is the first number

That avoids all that.

I’m reminded of the Buddhist

Teaching about Indra’s Net,

Where each spot reflects all the others.

But Basil the Great said that we shouldn’t

Count. Which is just a way of saying

That we shouldn’t obsess over it.

 

Invisible

I’ve always been a side dish,

Never the main course.

A third wheel.

Papageno.

The secret:

There is no side dish,

No third wheel,

No Papageno.

It’s a place to be almost invisible.

But not quite. Everything is not quite.

Better than being a flashy hermit.

Better than being a stylite.

 

 

Wild Geese (to the Memory of Mary Oliver)

They look so noble

Swimming along the Charles River.

But they remember me

As the guy who once

Brought them bread crumbs.

If I did it once, why not now?

To them I was a source of bread crumbs.

Why not now?

They seem far less noble now.

Coming out of the water

To the river bank.

 

Stationary Bike

I used to make fun of

The people who

Rode them to nowhere.

But now there is one in the basement

That I ride to nowhere

Almost daily.

I’m trying to get,

Aerobically fit

Whlle listening to music.

Lucky for me that Bach’s

B Minor Mass,

And his Goldberg Variations,

Never seem to get

Old.

 

Relativity

There is no “up,” nor any “down,”

And also no more smile or frown.

But there are those who’ve tasted real

And thus, for them it’s no big deal.

That language, damn it, can’t contain it.

But once they know that, they can ‘splain it.

 

Morning Policy

When I go walking

Solo in the early morning,

I make it my policy

To say “Good Morning”

To everyone I pass.

And approximately

Half of them return my greeting.

The secret is this:

To regard those who

Don’t respond with the same

Joy as I do to those who do respond.

It is simple, but not easy.

 

Thomas Merton’s Selves

Merton was always talking about

The False self,

And the True Self.

False self is the one we make up

To explain ourselves.

That is more like

What we want to

Be, rather than what we are.

On which we can place

Ornaments and such.

The True Self is what remains,

After a piece of wood is split.

 

Question with Several Answers (All True)

In order to say that “I love you,”

(Then to say “I hate you” too)

We have to be two separate Joes,

Sep’rate in ways that shows.

It’s truth. Not an oddity,

The universe, it is our body.

But we forget that basic truth,

In every moment, yeah forsooth.

 

Spiritual Practice

The universe it glows, it glows,

Deep down inside, though no

one knows,

How magical it’s clear to see—

Whether strip malls or that old tree.

Intelligence and wild compassion surround us

now by all accounts,

In big embarrassingly large amounts.,

To practice is to claim that love,

It fits all beings like a glove.

 

Questions

If you’re in luck (you are) and wise,

A question for you will arise.

You’ll practice with it, though it’s odd,

Can be as terse as “What is God?

Can also be the simple cry,

As easy as, say, “Who am I?”

Or entirely unreligious too:

Like “What is Coke?” Or “What’s Yoo hoo?”

As long as the question stays more key

Than any answer you can see.

All the answers are untrue,

The questions are themselves for you.

 

Fairouz (1934 - )

They changed your name

To this one that means

“Turquoise” in Arabic

Which maybe was better than the

Nouhad Haddad you were born with.

You got famous for chanting the Qur’an,

Even though you were born and raised

In a Christian village.

It was simple really:

No one else sounds like you.

The name is incidental.

 

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996)

You were what was once called

Unlucky in love.

Married twice

But neither of them “took,”

And you always worried about your weight.

Even when it was discovered that

You had an astonishing instrument

That could only be shared.

Through it all, this was your secret:

That you were a little girl,

Come to tell us about love,

Even the deepest parts, the hardest stuff about it.